


Spotless Mind

by phantasmicNarrator



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Breaking Up & Making Up, Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Meet-Cute, Memory Alteration, Non-Linear Narrative, Recreational Drug Use, The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:47:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28640250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantasmicNarrator/pseuds/phantasmicNarrator
Summary: "How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!The world forgetting, by the world forgot.Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d..."Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander PopeThe Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind AU, or what I'd like to call it: "Mom says it's Dirk's turn to have a brain ghost of the guy he likes but can't seem to communicate with."
Relationships: Jake English/Dirk Strider
Comments: 19
Kudos: 38
Collections: DirkJake Big Bang 2k21





	1. Forelsket

**Author's Note:**

> _**Forelsket (Norwegian)**_  
>  \- (adjective) the euphoric feeling at the beginning of love.

Faint jazz music plays in the background as you take in your surroundings. Jane's invited you to a small French-style café in the city for brunch, gushing over the newest delicacies that they've been putting out recently. It's a cozy place, walls painted to look like grey bricks with a splash of green vines tangling themselves into the cracks. There's a lot of pots filled with beautiful flowers surrounding them, giving it a feeling of spring in the middle of a rainy October afternoon. You'll admit you like it a little, especially after you get a warm cup of hot chocolate. 

You look out the window, watching all the people walk by the café, umbrellas in their hands, living their lives without a clue that you exist watching them. Nameless faces just walking by, never to blossom into a full character with an actual story that means anything to you. They just exist for a moment as you watch them intently before disappearing the moment you take your eyes off them, Jane clearing her throat to grab your attention. 

"So," she begins as she pushes the slice of red velvet cake she had ordered towards you. "Give it a taste and tell me what you think." 

Setting down the cup of hot chocolate that you have been holding this entire time, you pick up her fork and look at the slice of cake. It looks good, soft to the touch. It came with a matching red macaron on top of a bed of whipped cream, how fancy. Honestly speaking, you're not one for sweets but how can you say no to Jane? She's just testing the waters before trying out any food herself. So you do as she says and take a bite. 

The cake is soft, spongy in your mouth, and the cream is sweet, but not overwhelming. It melts immediately on your tongue and you have to admit that it’s pretty damn good, even for your standards. You nod approvingly before pushing the plate back towards her, picking up your napkin to wipe at any excess cream. “That shit’s good. Not too sweet, not bland either. It goes pretty well with the hot chocolate without taking away from the original taste,” you tell her as you lift your cup, taking a sip as if to prove your point. Yup, still good. 

Jane’s blue eyes sparkle in delight and she looks down, picking up her fork to dig in happily into the cake. She hums happily at the taste and you swear, she’s one step away from kicking her legs like an excited child with the way she’s smiling. You try to keep yourself from smiling as well, but her good mood is just too damn contagious. 

It’s been a while since you’ve seen her genuinely smiling like that. Whenever the two of you meet up, it’s usually for study sessions. She, being a business major and an overachiever, is constantly swamped with work for multiple classes, projects, and events, so she’s constantly stressed about something. And if it’s not their study session, sometimes it’s at the events that Jane helps host. 

Were it not for her, you would never bother showing up, seeing as rubbing elbows with the elites of the college was never really your thing, but you do to show her support. There, you sit near the punch table and watch Jane talk and chatter with different people, fluttering about like the amazing hostess that she is with a big, fake smile on her face the entire time. You stay by the time the party's over so you can help her put things away and accompany her home. She’s one of your best friends, which means you’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that she’s alright. Even if it means taking hours out of your free time to just stand around awkwardly and stare at nothing. 

“I’ve been wanting to try this cake for a long time now but I haven't had time until now!” She exclaims as she picks the macaron off her cake and takes a bite out of it. “Gosh, I can’t wait until the end of the semester. I just want to be done with everything already.” She lets out a groan, shaking her head. She goes to take another bite of her macaron but pauses, remembering her manners, and offering it to you. You bite it, being mindful to not bite her fingers in the process, before thanking her. 

“Should’ve thought about that before filling up your weekly schedule with stupid shit to do,” you remind her. You had warned her when she was picking out her classes to not overload herself with things she might not be able to do but she waved you off, reassuring you that she would be able to keep up with all her classes, along with her extracurricular activities. And the crazy part is that she’s doing well with all of it. She’s just stressing out in between breaks, cursing her past self for thinking it’d be a good idea to join so many clubs and organizations while wrestling her business classes. 

Most people don’t realize how good Jane is at hiding her actual emotions and praise her for being calm and collected, even in the face of danger. But you know Jane enough to understand when she’s on the brink of breaking down and screaming at any poor bystander who happened to look at her funny. 

She rolls her eyes at you as she wipes her fingers with her napkin before going back to eating her slice of cake, waving the fork around. “I need all of that “stupid shit”. It’ll look good on my resume and it’s something I can talk about during job interviews! Experience and all that jazz after all,” she retorts with a casual shrug before looking up at you, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Speaking of which, have you thought of what you’re even going to do after college?” 

Eugh, this isn’t a conversation you’re really interested in having. Honestly, you haven’t thought much of what comes after college. As far as you know, you’ve been riding it out, taking the classes suggested for your engineering major as well as for your philosophy major. Sure you’re involved in a couple of side gigs as well but none of them are as time-consuming and boring like the shit Jane gets up into. 

Not only that but you’re pretty sure putting Muppets Enthusiasts Club wouldn’t look good on your resume. It’s not even a club, to begin with. It’s usually just you and a couple of other weirdos watching Muppet movies while you sit in the corner, working on one of your latest puppet projects. You barely speak to any of the other members, only to agree on a time and date for the next club meet-up before departing. They say nothing to you, you say nothing to them. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. 

“A little?” You confess before rolling your eyes when her shoulders slump in disappointment. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s fine. I’ll find something to do with my life, I’m just keeping my options open right now. You know how I am with this kind of shit. If I’m not completely ass deep in it, I’ll just half-ass it.” 

Jane wrinkles her nose at you, finding your choice of words distasteful. “I really wish you hadn’t said it like that,” she says with a huff before shaking her head. “I just worry about you, Dirk! We have, what, another year left before graduation? And you still haven’t looked into places to get an internship at or maybe an apprenticeship? That could be a good opportunity for you!” 

“You have nothing to worry about. I’ll figure something out before we graduate. Before you know it, I’ll have the sweetest job that pays me stacks just for showing up,” you exaggerate, grinning a little. She snorts at you and waves you off. 

“That’s not how it works and you know that!” She giggles, pointing at you in an accusatory manner with her fork. You shrug back in response. 

“Well, I gotta keep myself busy until you can open your big-shot company and hire me to design all the machinery you’ll be using,” you say as you reach over to pick a chunk from her cake. She smacks your hand away, making you drop your piece, before picking it up with the fork to feed it to you. 

“Stop that, you’ll be waiting a very long time for that to happen, buster! I’m not just gonna open a company the moment I leave college! I don’t even know what sort of business I’ll be running yet! But you better find something good to do,” she says as her expression softens slightly. “I believe in your ability to always pull through in the end but... Make sure that you’re positive about what you’re doing.” 

There’s a serious note in the air and you can’t help but wonder where that came from. Is there an underlying reason to her nagging beside her being “worried” for your future? Perhaps, she’s doubting herself a little and wondering if she really wants to get into the business? 

Yikes, that would be a problem. She’s put so much time and effort into this degree, only to get tired before the last lap and discover that maybe she wants to do something else. But what would that something be if not opening a restaurant that immediately gets rewarded five stars for her delicious cooking? Or perhaps starting a new brand, maybe of cooking recipes and devices that every foodie drools over owning someday? 

You don’t get a chance to ask her about this because the door of the café swings open, the bell announcing a new customer, and you turn your head on instinct. 

The world seems to stop all 

at 

once. 

Drenched from the rain outside, a young man comes into the café, pulling at his wet clothes clinging to his body, a goofy smile on his lips. You can’t help but stare in awe at him as he pushes his black hair out of his eyes, an action that you’ve never thought you’d find attractive. That shit was never as hot as people made it look in the movies and yet here this man was, making your jaw drop by merely existing. Honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised if he was actually an actor with the way he moves confidently towards the cashier to order whatever it is he wants to order an-- 

“Jeepers!” 

The handsome man slips in a puddle of water that’s collected around him and he struggles to keep himself from falling face-first onto the ground which results in him waving his arms maniacally. You watch as he manages to steady himself, his eyes wide, before straightening himself up, letting out a sheepish laugh. A couple of the other customers were watching him as well, giggling behind their hands, but he doesn’t seem to notice them. He makes eye contact with you and your heart feels like it’s being crushed. 

There’s something... Familiar about those green eyes of his. As he flashes an awkward smile at you, nodding slightly, he turns back to the cashier to mumble his order, most likely embarrassed out of his mind from the spectacle. You can’t stop staring after him though because he looks way too familiar and you can’t place where you’ve seen this goofy-looking guy. Maybe he goes to the same college? He looks to be the same age. There’s a big chance that you probably had a class with him before but don’t remember because you could never be bothered to memorize the faces of your classmates. Though at the same time, there’s no way you’d be able to forget such a handsome face as his. 

It isn’t until the guy scurries off to one of the tables to hide that you turn your attention back to Jane, who had fallen strangely silent while that happened. She seems to have been watching the guy as well, but unlike you, she didn’t seem amused. If anything, she was giving him a dirty look, almost as if his presence offended her or something. That’s weird. 

“You know that guy?” You ask Jane, turning her attention back to you. Her eyes widen in surprise as she looks at you and she shakes her head. 

“Well! Not really?” She says, her eyes flickering away from you in a similar fashion that she does when she’s lying. “I mean, I know of him but I wouldn’t say that I know him, per se. He’s no one important so why don’t we just talk about som--” 

“Jane,” you cut her off immediately, raising an eyebrow at her. “Are you hiding something?” 

Her cheeks puff out as she pouts slightly, a shameful red tinge on her brown skin. Glancing up at you before looking back down at her cake, Jane lets out a deep sigh. “No, it’s just...” She trails off, struggling to find the words to say to you. “If you feel any curiosity towards him, just do me a favor and try to ignore it. Please?” 

Well, that’s certainly a strange request. A pretty vague one at that as well. 

“I wasn’t really that curious before but now I am. What do you know about this guy and why should I steer clear of him? He doesn’t look like a bad guy, just kind of clumsy,” you say as you peek over to where the guy had settled down, scrolling on his phone as he waits for his order to be called. 

Jane purses her lips at this, staring at you hard. “He isn’t a terrible person but he’s just not... Great? I don’t know, Dirk, I’m really not comfortable explaining this because it’s just... Too much and I don’t even know the whole story, but just stay away from him, alright? He’ll just cause you too much grief and you don’t need someone like him distracting you from the important things that you need to focus on instead,” she says in a sharp tone. 

“Jake?” 

The man stands up at the call of his name and makes his way towards the cashier, ready to accept his drink from him. Your brain seems to recognize that for some reason as if it already knew that that was his name, which is illogical because you’ve never met nor spoken to this guy before. Even so, it just feels so… _him_. Like if there was ever someone born to be named Jake, it would be him. Jake... _Jake_. The name floats around in your head like a familiar chant, or maybe an old song you used to put on repeat all the time before dropping it completely to the point of forgetting it. Are you sure you haven’t met him before? 

After taking his drink, Jake heads back to his table to enjoy it, still seemingly unaware of your constant staring. He pulls out his phone to scroll through it once more, smiling softly at whatever he was looking at, and something about his smile makes your heart do somersaults in your chest, pushing against your lungs and rattling your ribs excitedly. 

For some reason, you know this isn’t the first time you’ve had this sort of reaction, the fluttering sensation in your chest feeling as familiar as breathing. There’s just this softness surrounding Jake, an air of comfort that screams home, and you can’t help but wonder what the hell Jane is even talking about when she says that he’s bad news. With a smile like that, how could he ever hurt a fly? 

“Dirk,” she says through gritted teeth and you look back to meet her gaze. Whoops, guess it had been obvious to her that you were staring at the cute guy and flying off into dreamland, already fantasizing about riding off into the sunset in his seemingly muscular arms and kissing the goofy grin off his face. 

“Okay, okay, done drooling after a cute drenched guy,” you say, lifting your hands in surrender. “I promise I won’t get involved with him even though I still don’t get why I shouldn’t. He’s hot and dorky as fuck. Pretty innocent looking too.” 

Jane pinches the bridge of her nose, pushing her red-rimmed glasses up, and forces a sigh. “Let’s just say looks can be deceiving,” she replies dryly and you decide to let it go for now. You’re sure you’ll be seeing more of the guy, even if you don’t personally seek him out. Like one of those things in which you learn about something and end up seeing it everywhere, never having realized how it was constantly surrounding you. 

Though you really wouldn’t mind seeing Jake more often. 

* * *

To say that you weren’t looking out for the cute guy from before would be a lie, in case anyone has noticed. 

You visit the café a little more frequently than you’ll admit, stopping by whenever you have a break in your schedule. If anyone notices your growing habit of always showing up late to a function with a coffee cup in your hand, you’ll simply say that the café’s pastries are simply to die for and no Roxy, you’re not developing an addiction to caffeine. You actually really hate the aftertaste coffee leaves in your mouth afterward, why would you waste so much money on something you don’t even like? 

Like really think about it. If your mouth constantly tastes of coffee, you’ll feel tempted to buy the mints that they sell at the front counter, specifically geared at coffee-drinkers to get rid of their nasty bean breath, and if you _do_ buy it, that’s even _more_ money being spent and considering how much you frequent the place, that’s practically an extra dollar and fifty cents along with your five dollars black coffee that tastes like ass and the sugary sweet apple crumb cake that cost six dollars because you need something to counteract the bitterness of the coffee. Do you know how much that adds up in a week? A lot. Not to mention what it’ll cost after a couple of months if you keep this habit up. No, you’re not addicted. 

That’s not really the point here anyway. The point is that you’ve been visiting the café way too often as someone who doesn’t even like coffee or vibing in a place with no reason. Roxy knows you pretty well to know that there’s always a reason behind the things you do. That you’re not one to simply sit in a café for a couple of hours for the sake of just drinking semi-good coffee and nibbling on a couple of sweets. They know and they’re certainly getting suspicious. That’s not good at all. If they start to suspect something, they’re certainly going to ask Jane or Callie and considering Jane knows about the fact that you had been ogling the cute guy that had come in the day you both came here together and specifically told you to stay away from him, you know Jane will not be happy about it. 

You still don’t know what the deal is about that anyway. You tried your best to keep an eye out for the dude around campus, just in case you had any chance to run into him there, but nothing. You don’t have him in any of your classes or your extracurricular ones and you don’t even see him in the cafeteria when you do decide to head down there with the others. You don’t dare to even ask around though. You already feel enough of like a stalker frequenting the one place where you saw him in pathetic hopes that he’ll show up again. You don’t need to be giving other people the wrong idea by asking them about someone who you’re pretty sure doesn’t actually exist. He was way too handsome to be real. 

You glance over at the minimalistic silver clock hanging next to the café’s menus and try to force down a sigh. If you stay any longer, you would have successfully spent two hours doing nothing important. It would’ve been a smarter idea if you had brought some homework to do while you waited. Fuck, but what even is the point of waiting here for him if you don’t even actually have a plan for when you do see him again. It’s not like you can just swagger up to him and ask him out. You’re not like that. Sure, you’re cool enough but you’re not stupid confident to automatically assume that he’d be into you. Plus, you have to wait a while for him to settle down before setting your unfinished plan into motion. Can’t just be jumping a guy for no damn reason, what are you, desperate? 

Tapping your finger against the wood impatiently, you decide to give it up for today, shoving the rest of your muffin into your mouth and folding the wax wrapper up into a little ball to throw away in the garbage. You toss it carefully, letting out a subtle hiss of victory when it goes in perfectly, before heading towards the counter to buy another pastry. You might as well get something to go. 

You pull out your phone to check your notifications while you wait in line, opening up a message from Rose asking for your whereabouts and texting her back quickly. You promise to be back in twenty minutes once you get some cinnamon buns before tucking your phone back into your pocket. As you do, the bell of the door rings again, announcing a new customer’s arrival. On instinct, you glance over, expecting it to just be a random stranger, but your eyes widen and your heart rises in your chest, threatening to break free from your ribs, fluttering, kicking, screaming— 

It’s him. Oh, wow, it’s him. 

He doesn’t look at you when he comes in, too busy looking down at his phone, but he automatically moves to stand behind you in line. He’s so close, you’re sure you can hear him breathing, but you’re also sure that you’re being a tad bit creepy. It’s hard not to be hyper-aware when he’s right there and your heart won’t stop from slamming itself against your ribcage, thundering loudly as blood pulses in your ears. 

“Next.” 

You step forward after the person in front of you moves out of the way to order a couple of cinnamon buns, doing your best to keep your voice as level as possible. You stuff your hands into the pockets of your leather jacket to keep yourself from visibly fidgeting but find yourself turning the quarters in your pockets over and over again. Once the cashier bags your pastries, you pull out your wallet to pay, hoping that your facade isn’t breaking. It isn’t until then when a bright idea crosses your mind and you clear your throat to grab the cashier’s attention. 

He looks at you with a dull expression, raising a disinterested eyebrow at you, but it doesn’t deter you. You fight the urge to glance behind you. “Oh, and I’ll pay for the person behind me,” you say coolly, handing the cashier your credit card. There’s no reaction from the cashier as he takes it from you and rings up your receipt. You don’t even know if the guy behind you heard you or even gives a shit, but you’re not about to waste your chance to leave a good impression. He might not remember you from the first time you saw him stumble in, but he’ll definitely remember you now. 

You take your card back from the cashier before taking your bag with your pastries in it, heading back to your initial seat. You know you told Rose you’d be on your way soon but she’s just going to have to hold her damn horses. No doubt this was the perfect way to grab his attention, by being the perfect gentleman and paying for his food. He’s bound to at least notice you a little, seeing that it’s rare for anyone to do that. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s going to fall head over heels just because you were being a decent fucking person, come on now. You’re not that stupid nor that much of an asshole. He doesn’t owe you a cent for being nice and you truly believe that. You’ll be content with at least a hello. A smile even. That’s all. As long as he knows that you exist. 

Luckily for you, the booth that you’re sitting in is pretty damn close to the waiting area where you have to stand awkwardly for a couple of minutes while the baristas mix your drink. As you sit down and munch idly on one of your cinnamon buns, thanking the high heavens that you decided to wear your triangle shades that make it hard to see your eyes, you casually watch as Jake stands in the waiting area, turned a little ways away from you but occasionally glancing over in your direction. Bingo. You try not to get too smug just yet, munching away on your bun and pretending to look away. You don’t want to make this too easy for him just yet. You haven’t completely won yet anyway. 

After a while, you hear him thank the barista when they hand him his drink as well as footsteps coming close. Without looking up, you get up immediately, grabbing your bag, when you hear him cry out and feel something scalding hot burst on your chest. 

Well, shit. 

“Ohmyflippingod I’m so sorry—!” Comes his panicked cry but you’re too busy processing what just happened. The gears in your head are cranking slowly but surely as you try to retrace the steps of what just happened. You hadn’t looked up when you heard him coming so you might have just made a miscalculation as to how close he was when you got up. But because you’re so damn quick sometimes, you just scared the living shit out of him and made him spill his drink —the exact drink that you had paid for, mind you— all over your shirt and jacket. And to make matters worse, you still haven’t said a damn thing about it while he’s freaking out about it, but god _damn_ if he’s not making panic look like an art form. 

“Watch where you’re going next time,” you grit out, the pain from the burning liquid seeping into your clothes making your words come out more aggressive than they are. His beautiful green eyes widen, and for a second, he almost looks intimidated by you, but it probably looks really stupid because he’s ridiculously taller than you and could probably benchpress you if he wanted to. (You wish he would.) 

Fuck, you hadn’t meant it to make it sound like that but it’s too late. Your brain is shutting down. No more logical thinking now, your body acts immediately on autopilot. With your bag in your hands, you robotically pull away from him, not even bothering to grab some napkins to clean off the coffee on your clothes. You ignore all the stares you’re receiving from the other people who happened to see your fuck up, pretending as if there’s not a giant stain on your shirt. What stain? You don’t have a stain if anybody asks. And you sure as fuck aren’t feeling the coffee seep through your fucking binder that is already uncomfortable to wear. Nope, not at all. 

That’s exactly what you say to Rose when you finally meet up with her outside of the library on campus after she asks you why you were late. Like any sensible person, she doesn’t believe you. 

* * *

You avoid the café like the plague for a week or so. You can barely bring yourself to even get close to the place to even just peer in like a desperate loser. The memory of his eyes widening at you in shock plays over and over in your head, refusing to leave you be. On one hand, humiliation burns you alive and makes your skin crawl whenever your brain decides to remind you of the biggest fuck up of the year, but on the other hand, you can’t help but _swoon_ over how concerned he was. Gosh, he’s just so… Beautiful. It’s starting to drive you mad. 

What’s also starting to drive you mad is how badly you want a coffee. You don’t even _like_ coffee and yet the desire had you buying cheap shit from the dollar store, only to realize that it tastes like ass and remind you that if you want something good, you’ll have to pull up your big boy pants and drag your ass to the café. 

Not only that, but Roxy has been complaining about you not getting them any cinnamon buns. It wasn’t your fault that Rose practically ate all the ones you brought back the last time you went and you’ve been too chicken to go back after the mishap. You also really don’t feel the need to tell Roxy all about that day. You barely got away from telling Rose and now she feels the need to ask about the terrible burn that still lingers on your chest with that shit-eating smirk on her face. She doesn’t even know the full story but she’s holding it against you like a poison-tipped dagger to your neck. Terrible. 

As you get ready to go, you fight the stomach-eating butterflies that tear at your insides. You’re not sure if you should be nervous about the idea of seeing Jake again or be relieved about not seeing him. You definitely don’t want to show your face after that stupid fuck up, not sure how to apologize correctly after bumping into him and practically scolding _him_ for something that _you_ did? The correct course of action would have been to apologize and offer to buy him another drink and maybe that would have led to more conversation and possibly receiving his number, but instead, you ran out of there with your tail between your legs. 

Nice thinking, Einstein. 

You try not to think about it as you make your way to the café, stuffing your hands into your pockets. You’ve got your earbuds in as you walk, letting your playlist drone in your ears and block out the outside noise. With music playing loudly, it’s hard to let your mind fill with unnecessary and stupid thoughts and yet worry pulls at the back of your brain 

When you arrive at the café, you push the door open, hearing the familiar bell above you ring out. You don’t dare to scope out the area, just in case you see his face. You head directly to the counter, waiting in line behind a couple of customers, refusing to look anywhere but the menu. You don’t even know if you can recognize any of the baristas that worked on the day of your mishap, don’t know if any of them have talked about how big of a fuck up you are. Just the thought that they might have gossiped about you makes your skin boil. It really isn’t that deep but fuck, you really hate that thought. 

The cashier is a different person this time but nothing about their expression lets you know if they know about you. Of course, they wouldn’t know. Why would they even care? Who the fuck gives a shit about you? To think they would remember you after a week of you not being here, especially if they hadn’t personally been there to see the accident? Fuck, they might have not even seen it since they were pretty busy with customers. You really worked yourself into a ball of worry for no damn reas— 

“Next.” 

“Mocha latte with soy milk and a pump of vanilla, an apple crumb cake, and four cinnamon rolls,” you say automatically, pulling out your wallet to hand them your credit card. You don’t even know why you’re freaking out so bad, you don’t even have to stay to eat your stuff. You can just take your things and go if you’re so psyched out. Literally, no one will care if you fuck out of existence. 

Unaware of the silent panic attack you’re currently having, the cashier rings up your things, packing the pastries up and tucking them into a recyclable carton box before handing them back to you, along with your card and receipt. As always, they direct you to the waiting area to wait while your drink is being prepared, which you do. No point in sitting down at one of the booths if you’re planning to hightail it out of there the moment your drink is in your hands. So far so good. 

As you wait, you pull out your phone to scroll through your messages, your social media. The timeline is bland as fuck but mostly because you don’t really follow many people. Mostly just accounts to keep up with news of your interests and whatever memes your friends and family decide to post. You see a couple of Jane’s formal tweets in which she’s promoting an event at school again, posing and smiling brightly for the camera, but there’s a hint of panic in her eyes. No doubt she’s probably raising a fit about something going wrong on her private account. You’ll have to check it later. 

“Um… Excuse me? ...Hello?” 

It takes you longer than you’re proud to admit that you didn’t realize someone was talking to you, having automatically assumed it was being directed to someone else. But you look up anyway as you pull out one of your earbuds to listen better and your heart feels like it’s about to jump ship the moment you meet familiar beautiful green eyes. 

It’s him. 

He looks a bit sheepish as he stares at you, almost bashful, which would be such a dumb look considering he’s a big guy, a lot bigger than you, but he’s still looking at you with such an unsure expression that it reminds you of a puppy who’s been caught after tearing up the toilet paper roll again. What the fuck, he’s really cute. Even his mustache looks unsure, drooping at the ends. That should be illegal worldwide. 

“Can I help you?” You reply dumbly and already, you want to kick yourself. You should probably be watching what you say. This person could easily pick you up and break your spine over the knee Bane-style if he wanted to, so you shouldn’t be pushing any buttons. Especially when you still need to apologize to him for making him spill his coffee and leaving him to deal with the mess. He may look like a heartbroken puppy but you know better than to judge a book by its cover. As Jane said, things aren’t always what they seem. For all you know, he might have killed someone and you don’t know it. That’d be just your luck. Stalking an infamous killer because you couldn’t let go of his beautiful smile. Good going, Dirk, this is how you meet your end. As long as the world knows you lived your life to the fullest, chasing cute guys without regard. 

“I don’t know if you remember me,” he begins awkwardly, twisting his fingers together as he avoids your eyes, glancing behind you and then at your face but never meeting your gaze. “But, um… A little more than a week ago, you bought me my drink?” 

He thinks you don’t remember him? Cute. He’s super cute, who gives a shit if he’s a serial killer by night, you’ll let him have his way with you. He might be assuming that you hate him by the way you spoke to him, but the joke is on him, you’re already planning your spring wedding with him and kissing him surrounded by fairy lights. 

You wonder how Roxy would feel being your best… Gal? Best friend? Homie of Honor? That sounds close enough. But you’re not sure if Jane would be offended if she wasn’t the maid of honor. Actually, scratch that, she was the one who said you shouldn’t be messing with this guy. Oh well, you’ll make her see that it’s meant to be. Your heart is already set on making it work. 

“Oh, yeah, I remember now,” you mumble dully, looking away when the barista approaches you with your drink to take it from them. “What about it?” 

You hear him stammer a little as he speaks, probably getting more nervous. God, you should probably ease up on him but it’s hard. You’re not really the most approachable person you know. Jane has mentioned it to you many times before, criticizing you for not giving other people a chance to get a word in when they speak to you. You’re cold when you talk, barely making an expression that could help clue people into how you’re feeling. You’re blunt to the point that sometimes it makes people uncomfortable, but honestly, you don’t see what’s the point of beating around the bush. The easier you say what you want, the less time you spend fucking around, what’s the problem. 

“I just… Wanted to thank you and possibly return the offer…?” He replies hesitantly, finally meeting your eyes for a brief moment. All the while, his cheeks are getting redder and redder, you’re almost scared he’s going to overheat. If this was a cartoon, you’re certain you would’ve been able to see steam pouring out of his ears, his fingers twisting and knotting themselves out of nervousness. He’s so fucking cute and you’re willing to bet all your life’s savings that he has no fucking clue about it. Maybe One Direction was right. That’s what makes him beautiful. 

“I already paid for my things,” you point out, holding up your cup to push your point, before taking a sip. You immediately regret it, having forgotten that they always serve the hot drinks so ridiculously hot that you can feel it burn the tip of your tongue alive, but you refuse to break your facade. Not in front of him. You’ve already made a fool out of yourself in front of him, you can’t have it happen again. 

He stares at you dumbly for a moment, his eyes glancing at your drink before jumping back to you. No doubt he was expecting you to react to the hot drink seeing as it was recently served, but you won’t give him the pleasure of knowing your next move. Guys like the unpredictable. You would know since you’re a guy yourself. But then again, you don’t really like unpredictable things? They tend to mess with your plans in the worst ways possible. Alright, so you like things that to other people seem unpredictable, but for you, it’s completely planned and falls in line with your vision. As long as they don’t mess up with the big picture, it’s fine. Fuck, where was this line of thought going? 

“Ah, uh… So you did,” he finally says before scratching the back of his head, looking away from you. “Um, alright! Sorry to bother you then and uh, thanks for the drink the other day,” he adds on, offering an awkward smile. Bless his little heart for refusing to acknowledge the fact that most of his drink ended up soaked on your shirt. You’re sure anyone else would’ve milked that for what it’s worth. You know you would’ve if you were someone else. 

“You don’t gotta leave,” you say, catching him before he can turn away from you. “If you really want to thank me, you can do that by hanging out with me a little.” 

It’s a cheesy line, one that has no business landing in real life, but you still threw it, casting it like a meager worm on a hook to catch your own Moby Dick or whatever. You never paid attention to that book in school so sue you. You don’t even think you’re supposed to be casting a line for a whale. Those fuckers are large and strong. Whatever, the metaphor is getting away from you. 

But it does land, you can tell by the way his eyes widen and lighten up in delight. What the fuck? You would almost be concerned that it landed that well if you weren’t pleased by its success. Keyword being _almost_. 

“Sure, I can hang out with you!” He chirps eagerly before sticking out his hand for you to shake but he quickly retracts it when he notices that your hands are occupied by your bag of pastries and your drink. “So um, my name’s Jake! Jake English at your service.” 

You bite back the urge to say, _I know_ because you do know. That his name is Jake, at least. You haven’t been able to get it out of your head ever since he walked into the café that first day. Now you’ve got his last name to go with it. What sounds better, Dirk English or Jake Strider? 

“Dirk Strider,” you supply as you follow him to the booth where he had been sitting previously and sit across from him. He sits down where his cup of hot chocolate is, the marshmallows still floating on the top uselessly. “Nice to meet you properly.” 

Jake lets out a small laugh, lifting his hand to cover his mouth a little, but you can still see his buck-toothed smile shining behind it. “Yes! You’re already proving to be a rather interesting fellow,” he says, sounding more relaxed than he was when he had approached you earlier. “Since the last time we um… Er, met, I’ve been wanting to talk to you! But either you haven’t appeared much or you’re just a very elusive fellow to catch!” 

You raise an eyebrow at him as you set your bag of pastries on the table, opening it up so you can pull out your apple crumb cake. “You’ve been thinking about me?” You ask with a hint of mirth to your words. Your question seems to have pulled the brakes on whatever train of thought Jake was riding on because he becomes frozen in place, as if someone had put a pause to reality, his eyes wide as saucers, but then he sputters back to life and shakes his head. 

“Well n-not exactly like that!” He quickly corrects himself and you can see the red tint return to his cheeks with full force. “I just wanted to thank you for the drink! That’s all!” 

Allowing yourself to let out a small laugh, you wave him off before busying yourself with unwrapping your cake. “It’s fine, I was only just messin’ with you,” you reply, doing your best not to make it crumble to bits. “I’ve just been busy with shit so I haven’t had the time until today to come down here. Plus, I was really craving the pastries so I figured there was no better day than today to visit,” you lie easily, shrugging just as casually, before picking up your cake and taking a careful bite out of it. 

“Uh-huh, so what was it that had you so busy that you’ve neglected to quench your coffee addiction and pastry-devouring habits?” Jake teases back, pausing to take a sip of his hot chocolate. 

“I mean, I go to the college in town,” you reply after you’ve swallowed down your bite of cake. “The fact that I’m a college student should tell you enough about my daily schedule. And no, I’m not addicted to coffee. I can stop drinking this shit whenever I want. I don’t get addicted to anything.” 

Jake rolls his eyes and chortles in response. “Wow, okay, as if I believe that. The addiction thing, I mean,” he clarifies quickly before sitting up a little straighter in his seat. “But get out of town! I’m going to school here too! I would’ve figured that I’d see you before on campus.” 

You give him a casual shrug. “That depends what you’re majoring in. Even though we’re going to the same college, the campus is huge as hell. You can go years without meeting certain people just because your schedules and classes never align. Like boats passing in the night,” you say with a sage nod, pausing to take a sip of your sweet coffee. 

“Okay, that’s very true. I’m going for a degree in World History! As well as minoring in a couple of languages. But I doubt we’ve seen each other much before this semester since I’ve been elsewhere. Being overseas and all that,” he chirps, seeming delighted about that fact. “I already have Spanish down, but I’m trying to get my hand on European Portuguese and French while dabbling a little on German on the sidelines. Since I travel quite often, I’ve got to know the languages of the places I’m going to!” 

You let out an impressed grunt. He’s… Really smart. Not that you thought he was dumb, but that’s a lot of shit to be going through while in college. What kind of human would put themselves through so many classes like that? Even you who was practically a gifted child since birth can’t even handle the burden of work for your own classes. Well, you’re a burnout at this point, but your initial point still stands. How is he handling this so easily? 

“So you travel a lot?” You ask dumbly, admiring his face as you lean onto the palm of your hand. The other pro to wearing your shades constantly is that you can check someone out without them seeing where your eyes are going. It’s not like you’re staring inappropriately on purpose, get your head out of the fucking gutter, but sometimes you find yourself staring blankly in a specific spot without thinking. If you aren’t spacing the fuck out, you like to take in a person’s mannerisms when they talk. It really says a lot about them without explicitly telling you. 

For example, Jake talks a lot with his hands and barely makes eye contact with you. He’ll actually watch his hands for a while before tearing his gaze away to stare somewhere else as if constantly reminding himself that he’s not supposed to be staring at them. He’s pretty expressive too, constantly making faces at his own words as he talks. You notice that he wrinkles his nose a lot, especially when he laughs, using one of his hands to cover his smile. Even if he’s just listening, he’ll make a lot of small noises, nodding intently to make sure you know he’s still paying attention, which helps considering his gaze will trail off elsewhere. Had it been anyone else, you would’ve assumed they were only doing that to get you off their backs. Been there, done that. You know the drill. 

But he’s genuinely interested in what you have to say, sometimes interrupting you in the middle of a tirade with a rushed _“sorry, but—”_ to ask a question. Oftentimes, this will lead to another thread of conversation that gets completely off topic but fuck you can’t even be mad about it because you love to hear him talk. He gets excited so easily and sometimes his voice gets louder than what’s deemed socially appropriate, but honestly fuck society and what they have to say about how loud he’s being. You’d pay whatever price it’d take to listen to him talk about anything and everything. 

And he does talk about anything and everything. He talks about the trips around the world that he’s done already. His family has a little money to toss around which means he’s been visiting places ever since he was a little tot. He talks about funny moments that he’s lived and exciting things he’s done like riding a camel in Dubai or exploring one of the many underground swimming holes in Mexico. You would’ve felt envious of his ability to travel to so many places if you weren’t so endeared by how he recalls every memory with the same excitement that you imagine he had felt living those experiences. God, you’ve got it so bad already. 

“Gosh, I’ve been talking your ear off for so long, I’m almost embarrassed!” Jake says with a sheepish laugh. You wave him off before glancing behind you to look at the clock on the wall. You’ve been here with him way longer than you intended but honestly, it doesn’t feel like much time has passed by. You’re pretty sure your coffee has long gone cold now. 

“It’s cool, I don’t mind,” you reassure him when you look back at him, offering a small smile. “I like hearing you talk. You’ve got a lot of stories and they all sound pretty cool. It’s not every day I meet someone who’s as adventurous as you.” 

A happy flush returns to his cheeks and he grins brightly at you. “I’m glad you think so, chum! It’s always nice to have someone there to listen to them,” he says softly. 

There’s a brief moment of bated silence between the two of you, the sounds of the café rushing back in. You can clearly hear the sounds of plates and forks clacking against each other, people having their quiet conversations with one another, the noises of the baristas mixing the customers’ drinks. Jake stares at your hands, almost expectantly, before his eyes shoot up quickly to meet yours and then look away. 

You know what he’s feeling. It’s getting late and the both of you probably have other things to do than to word vomit at each other nonstop but neither of you guys wants to make the first move to step away in fear of giving the other the wrong impression. It’s not like you want to do anything else than to sit with Jake and learn everything you possibly can about him, responsibilities be damned, but someone has to make the first move. 

“As much as I’d like to listen to more, I gotta jet,” you finally break the stalemate, balling up the cling wrap from your cake into a small ball, tucking it away with a mental note to toss that away before you leave. “It was nice to meet you though. We should… We should do this again,” you suggest, hoping it doesn’t sound as awkward and stunted as it feels in your mouth. 

You’re not one to really initiate these sorts of things. The people in your life have become a constant because they just continued to show up without you really doing anything to make them stay and you guess they liked you despite everything to never let go. You don’t reach out to others personally, always fearing the idea that they’ll reject you or even that if they do agree to stay, it’s because they feel obligated to. You don’t want to be a fucking obligation so you refuse to let it be a problem. If people want to stay, they’ll decide that on their own. 

But Jake’s different. You don’t know how or why he feels so much different than anyone else if you’ve come across. Sure, you’ve had boyfriends before, nameless individuals who’ve done nothing but create and raise your expectations for what you want in a romantic relationship, but none of them have made you feel the way Jake does. You don’t care how desperate you look or if he’s noticed that you are, you just want him around. It’s a scary sensation to feel, especially as strong as it is because you’re not sure how to satisfy it. You did all that waiting to open up the chance to talk to him after seeing him once and now you’ve got it, what more could you possibly want? 

You just want him in your life, you think. 

Jake’s smile blooms like the rising sun on the horizon, painting your personal sky with shades of reds, oranges, and pinks. For a moment, you feel breathless as you stare at him. Does he know how dangerous he is? 

“Sure! I’d love that,” he says before holding out his hand, making a grabbing motion. You stare at his hand briefly before realizing he’s asking for your phone and quickly moving to dig it out of your pocket. You unlock it quickly before heading to contacts, opening up a new contact so when you hand it to him, he can put his information in. 

He takes your phone carefully, typing it in before handing it back to you, looking pleased with himself. “Text me when you’re free and maybe we can do something fun soon! I know midterms are coming up, but I’m sure we can squeeze something quick,” he chirps before moving to pick up his trash, balling it up as well. “I really liked talking to you too, Dirk.” 

You tuck your phone back into your pocket, nodding in agreement. “Likewise,” you reply, standing up with your things in your hands. “I’ll see you around, English.” 

He gives you a goofy salute with two fingers, grinning brightly. “Later, Strider!” 

Your legs almost refuse to move from their spot, but you force them to carry you to the trash can, tossing away your trash and making your way back home. You have to fight the urge to look back to see if Jake is coming out after you, stuffing your hands into your pockets with your bag of pastries knocking against your legs as you walk. It isn’t until you’re a couple blocks away from the café that you dare to check your phone, wondering what Jake had put his name as on it. People do cute shit with that when they’re flirting, don’t they? 

When you open up your contacts, you find his name easily, snorting a bit when you see the clover and sparkle emojis surrounding it. That’s pretty cute actually. You won’t lie about the fact that you’re amused. 

Putting your phone back into your pocket, you wrestle with your earbuds, untangling them so you can put them in again. With music playing in your ears again, you feel a lot more relaxed, your heart beating expectantly in your chest. You’ll text him once you get to your dorm room after stopping by Roxy’s apartment to drop them off the cinnamon buns, give him something to look forward to. You did your waiting, now it’s his turn. 

Well, would you look at that? Seems like something is finally going right in your life. 


	2. Saudade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ****  
> _Saudade (Portuguese)  
>  _\- (noun) longing for something that does not or cannot exist.__  
>  \- a nostalgic longing for a person that was once loved, but is now gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phew okay!! sorry for the wait n thank u for the lovely comments hehe “ヽ(´▽｀)ノ” they were very motivating to get this out as soon as i could. hopefully editing the next one wont take as long ( ･ัω･ั; ) hope u enjoy this next part !!

Thunder rolls overhead, an obnoxious warning that a summer storm is approaching, followed by the white flashing that lights up the black clouds that float in the night sky. Despite it being pretty late, there are still people walking around, some of them hurrying to get home and avoid the predicted torrents of rain while others walk carelessly. Either they haven’t paid attention to the weather app or they don’t give a shit. You would say you don’t give a shit about the rain but you sorta do so you hurry along your merry way, heading down the steps to get to the subway station.

You try to ignore the heavy feeling that grows in the back of your throat as you pay the fare and head to the platform, waiting for the next train to take you close to campus. Due to it being pretty late on a weekday, there are not many people around, thank fuck. Sure there’s always a chance that the people you do end up riding with are a couple of weirdos, but you’ve been in the city long enough to learn to ignore them. Besides, you’re not really in the mood to deal with anyone. Can’t curse anyone out while your voice keeps breaking. Shit’s uncool as fuck.

As soon as the train arrives and its doors open, you head inside and quickly take a seat away from anyone else. Thankfully, the car seems to be pretty empty as well with a couple of people already there, all of them pointedly avoiding looking at each other. You can’t blame them really. Living in the city means you’re practically pressed up against everyone at every moment, constantly in contact with people whether you want it or not. There’s barely a moment of peace in a place where no one seems to sleep, always moving, always working, always living.

But is it really living when you’re going to the same shithole job every day? Retracing your same steps from the day before to sit in the same cubicle, do the same brainless tasks that leave you feeling bitter and confused, wondering what exactly was the decision that led you to this path of misery? You come home, tired and weary, to shitty microwave dinners, to a cheating spouse who no longer smiles at you when you greet them, to a lumpy mattress that is too shitty to sleep on, with only the threat of doing all of this tomorrow looming over your head to put you to sleep.

And no, you’re not talking from experience.

Luckily for you, you’re still very much a student and while yes, your part-time job at the phone repair shop is shitty and boring, you, at least, have the fake holographic promise of a bright future waiting for you once you graduate. You’re still not sure what you’re going to do once you’ve reached that threshold and you really don’t want to think about it or else you’re going to pop like the grossest zit on a snotty teen’s face. But instead of disgusting puss and blood, it’ll be your brain matter all over the walls. A death such as that is the only one you’ll be willing to take if anyone continues to ask you what you want to do with your life. 

Because honestly, you’re not even sure if you want to move on from this moment in time.

It’s a stupid thought, you know this, everyone knows this. It’s not like you can just magically suspend time so you can ride on this depressing train for the rest of your life. The idea is so melodramatic as fuck when you know that after tonight, whatever you’re feeling is going to be gone by the time you wake up and you’ll be as good as new as if nothing ever happened to you. You can live your life again like you did two years ago before your life was turned upside down by a beautiful boy with those gorgeous green eyes and the sweetest smile only meant for yo—.

Stop. That smile isn’t yours anymore. Remember that. It’s never been yours.

You clench your fists as you look down at the metal plating under your feet, ignoring the lights that flash past your face. Your eyes burn and your cheeks flare up with humiliation as you try not to think about what decision it was that brought you to this moment. You don’t want to think about it because you know the moment you do, the dam will fucking burst and you’ll make an ass of yourself in front of these few strangers that happen to be in the same vicinity as you, and you’re sure as fuck not about to give them the show of a lifetime. 

The moment the train pulls up to your stop, you get out, shoving your hands into your pockets, and make your way out of the station towards the dorms, hurrying as fast as you can to avoid the rain but even you can’t outrun the weather and the stupid cliche movie tropes. Halfway to campus, the rain begins to fall, a couple drops at a time before a whole wave of it crashes onto you, soaking you to the bone. In any other situation, you might have been thankful for the rain, at least now it’ll cool the city air for the night, but at this moment, you feel like ending it all right then and there. Straight up die on the sidewalk for someone else to find your body eventually, all soggy and wrinkly from soaking in the rain.

Can we stop with the vague bullshit and now address how you ended up here? Walking angrily in the rain, your clothes sticking useless to your body. Your hair is going to be frizzy as fuck when you get dried up, but you suppose you’ve got other things to worry about later. Like maybe catching a cold. Or trying to recollect yourself after getting your brain wiped clean once and for all.

Right, yeah. The procedure is tonight, did you forget? Of course, you didn’t. How could you forget about that when you literally spent the afternoon at _Scratch Inc._ , getting your brain mapped out for the erasing procedure, reliving all the most painful memories of the one mistake that you let run your life for two years straight. But it’s okay, as you said before, after tonight, you won’t remember how you got here, of what happened tonight, of the pain you’re feeling in your chest, the very same pain that refuses to let you breathe easy.

Let’s talk about how you got to _Scratch Inc_.

Have you ever seen that one small scene from _The Simpsons_ where Bart is pointing to the TV with a remote while Lisa watches with complete dismay as he presses play to a clip of her when she went off on Ralph with a grin on his face saying, “ _you can actually pinpoint the second where his heart rips in half._ ”? No? Well, just imagine it then. Because it’s what it feels like God is doing to you right now if there ever existed one. 

It’s been more than a month since you’ve last seen or even spoken to Jake after he stormed out of your dorm, having announced that he wouldn’t be coming back ever. You figured that it was just something he declared in a fit of anger, seeing as though he tends to exaggerate things when he gets really worked up and that eventually, he’d come back and you can make things better again. 

It wasn’t your first fight with him and usually, you’re the one who blows up on account that sometimes you just get unreasonably upset and continuously refuse to say anything about it until it’s too late. But this time, he beat you to the punch, even going as far as taking back all the things he had left in your dorm, clothes, magazines, books, etc. Anything that he had staked a claim on was gone by the time you got back from your classes with only the spare key on your dresser to let you know he was serious.

_Fuck_ , you were so confident it was going to blow over. You figured he just needed to get whatever he was feeling out of his system for a couple of days, some time away from you to clear his thoughts because you get it, you promise that you do. You know you’re not the most pleasant person to be around for too long, you know that you can be overbearing, paranoid as fuck, insecure sometimes, maybe even pushy on a wrong day, but that’s never really bothered Jake all that much before, has it? Despite him not believing you when you earnestly told him you were a fucking mess, he said if he honestly had a problem with your behavior, he would immediately let you know, so what the fuck is all of this?

But you let it go. You let it go, hoping that maybe a week long break from you would be good for the both of you. Of course he got a case of Strider fatigue, a lot of your exes suffered from it before promptly dumping your ass on the sidewalk with the excuse that you’re just too batshit to be dealt with. Jake tends to be brash with the things that he says in the heat of the moment and he has told you as much, admitting to you in confidence that sometimes he doesn’t say what he means, that sometimes his mouth runs a little faster than his brain. So you figured that would be the case. He would come back, apologize for leaving and give you a chance to apologize, and it’d be fine.

But it’s been a month.

You’ve spam called his number in your panicked haze so many times to the point that you’ve practically memorized his voicemail recording by heart, but after a while, it sent you directly to the dial tone, telling you that the number you were calling was no longer in service. That made your fear grow larger, especially after you tried to text him, only to find your message won’t go through. Did Jake actually block you?

No, _fuck,_ you really don’t want to entertain the thought but it’s getting harder and harder to deny. It’s not like he verbally said that he wanted nothing to do with you or else he would’ve said it like he promised he would. Jake said that if he were to ever change his mind about the way he felt about you, he would tell you directly and upfront. He fucking promised! Sure, you were both in the wrong that night but it wasn’t that rough that he would just up and walk out of your life like the past two years of your lives hadn’t happened? 

Would he?

You’re going to be fucking honest here. There are frustrated tears stinging in your eyes as you squint blearily at your phone screen, reading through the unsent messages that you’ve been trying to resend over and over again and retyping them as if that would change anything. You even go back through your old messages with him to see where you could’ve gone, where it all started to roll downhill with him. There has to be something there that you can pick out and say “a _h-HA! This is the cause of all our misery_ ” so you can tear it apart and make everything better again. 

But nothing shows up. You can’t see any misstep you might have made before the fight, nothing that would’ve told you that Jake was unhappy with you before it went to shit. _Nothing_. 

Turning over on your bed, you switch applications, tabbing into social media to try to distract yourself. You can see your friends’ personal tweets before an idea crosses your mind. You could just check Jake’s accounts! He doesn’t use social media that often, mostly because he uses his account like an older aunt would, posting awkwardly positioned selfies with cheesy hashtags in the description, but you know that he uses them. If it’s not selfies of himself or pictures of his friends and family, it’s about the places that he’s going or the things he’s doing. You’re not doing anything creepy by looking at his social media. His account is public to everyone to see.

When you look up his username, you find that he had soft blocked you, which pushes the stake further into your chest. Well, at least it wasn’t a complete and solid block which you would probably have to make another account to be able to look at this one, so that gives you hope as well as leaving you confused as to why he would block you in the first place. His icon and his bio have changed, once having been a blurry picture of the two of you with your faces squished together, a picture you had taken during a New Year’s Eve party. It’s one of the few pictures you have in which you’re smiling, but only because you had been caught up in his kisses, his lipstick having smudged all over your face, before promptly launching a sneaky selfie attack. 

You never had the heart to force him to delete the picture. It’s the same picture that you used for his contact information so whenever he called you, it would take up your whole screen. One could even say it’s one of your more treasured pictures despite the stupid, dazed smile on your goofy face. 

Instead of that, it’s a picture of him from the back, one of those travel aesthetic types of images. You can’t place where he’s at but you definitely know it’s not in the United States. It can’t be. No, it has to be an old image of him from one of his previous trips, right? There’s no way he could actually be somewhere else, could there? That’s so much planning he would have done in secret if he did! But he wouldn’t have done that without telling you that he was leaving.

Right?

Opening up his account, the most recent picture leaves you breathless. Not in the awe-struck way that he used to leave you in, but in the “ _oh my fucking **god** I can’t breathe—_” way. A choked sob rises out of your throat and you press your hand to your mouth, almost as if to force it back down. He’s.. somewhere in this fucking world with somebody, holding his hand, kissing him in front of a _Binterest_ Perfect beach, smiling with lots of tiny hearts flooding the description box. He looks so happy next to this _stranger_ , leaning against him and looking like the definition of _#LoveWins_ posts.

“Why would he do this?”

You sit on Roxy’s couch with your head in your hands, practically bent over as you stare at the carpeted floor with a blank expression. It’s late as all hell, you know this, Jane has classes early in the morning, Roxy has a job to get to, and Callie is probably the only one you don’t feel guilty about waking up early because they have nothing to do tomorrow, but you couldn’t stop yourself from escaping your dorm and heading straight to your friends’ apartment, needing reassurance that what you were seeing wasn’t real and that you were just having another paranoid episode. Maybe you were asleep and dreamed of your worst nightmare coming true.

But the last embers of hope begin to dim out as Roxy continues to scroll silently through Jake’s account, sitting on the couch next to you while Jane stands on their right side, her arms crossed as she stares over their shoulder. Callie sits across from the three of you, having picked up their crochet project to busy their hands, occasionally looking up at you, but mostly glancing expectantly at Jane and Roxy. Neither of them looks surprised or shocked by what they’re seeing, a detail that scares you horribly. 

Roxy is the one who breaks the silence with a deep sigh, turning your phone off and handing it back to you. They don’t look at you at all while you take it back from them, but there’s a deep crease between their eyebrows, their lips pressed in a firm line. You rarely see Roxy this serious, seeing as they tend to prefer to keep the mood light, even when everything is burning to ashes before your very eyes. On any other occasion, you would’ve been relieved that they’re abstaining from cracking jokes, but right now, you wish they would just… Say something.

“They’re real,” Roxy finally says and your heart sinks into your chest as you stare at them. “All the old pictures of you and him are gone. I guess he purged his account after breaking up with you and replaced them immediately with new ones with this guy,” they mumble before pushing themselves off the couch, tugging their bedrobe a little tighter. 

“Essentially, he replaced me,” you finally spit out, clenching your phone tightly. Your vision begins to blur out and you’re not sure if it’s out of anger or heartbreak, but you’re not given a chance to think about it because Jane sits down next to you, taking the phone out of your hand before you can crush it and interlacing her fingers with yours, grounding you back to the present.

“Dirk, listen to me,” she begins seriously, trying to meet your eyes but you can’t face her when you’re on the verge of angry tears so she grabs your jaw with her free hand and forces you to look at her, her manicured nails digging slightly into your skin. “Look at me. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, Dirk! Yes, what he did was terrible but look on the bright side, the trash took itself out. Now you don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“Jane,” Roxy calls out warningly, shooting her a rare glare, but Jane only shakes it off before attempting a casual shrug. Nothing about this situation is casual and your friends’ strange behavior is making it harder for you to keep it together. 

“All I’m saying is that this could be a good thing, Dirk! You and he were always like cats and dogs, it wasn’t going to work,” she tries to reassure you, but somehow that feels worse. You knew you and Jake were different, that’s what you liked about him. The fact that he was nothing like you, that he was warm, kind, goofy, sweet. He was everything you wish you could be but better and you _loved_ that about him. And you assumed he loved your differences as well. He had always called you his better half for whatever reason. Did he realize that he was wrong?

“This isn’t helpin’ me, Jane,'' you grit out, unable to stop the first few tears from slipping down your cheeks. “If I’m being really frank with you, it fucking hurts.”

She lets out a frustrated sigh, pulling her hand away from you, and you can’t help but feel a little angry. Why is she the one frustrated? She’s not the one who just discovered that their partner has fucking abandoned them to go God-Knows-Where to kiss and post sappy Insta pictures with God-Knows-Who. What even gives her the idea that you would be relieved by this revelation? You didn’t want to break up with Jake, you never had any plans to fucking ruin things between the two of you to the point that he jumped onto a plane and decided to go on an adventure to get away from you. 

“Dirk,” Callie calls out, grabbing your attention. “I’m really sorry you had to find out about it this wa—”

“Wait, did you know about this?” You ask them, your eyes narrowing at them. Callie tenses up in their seat and their eyes begin to shake, glancing towards Roxy before returning back to you. Something about your question seems to put the other two on edge, Roxy uncrossing their arms and Jane standing up, almost as if they’re ready to defend Callie.

“N-no, I mean I d-didn’t,” Callie stammers as she tries to meet your eyes, but she just can’t. “I didn’t even hear about it until—”

“Callie!” Jane hisses, cutting them off before they can finish their sentence, but they cover their mouth, green eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights. But now your attention isn’t on them, but on Jane.

You stand up, clenching your fists slightly as you look at Jane directly. She’s just a smidge taller than you, not by much, but at least you’re not looking up at her. “Jane, what the fuck is going on because clearly there’s something that neither of you is telling me.” 

She holds your glare easily, no sign of her backing down, and she folds her arms. “Dirk, there’s really no point in trying to argue about this. What’s done is done. Jake’s gone, he left on his own volition. It’s been what, a month since he left? It’s pointless now! All that’s left is for you to move on,” she insists, attempting to redirect your attention, but little does she know that she just reminded you of something.

“Yes, it has been a month since he’s left but what’s more curious is the lack of concern from the three of you,” you point out, suspicious creeping into your voice as you eye each one of your friends, watching for their reaction. Callie still looks guilty as all hell, Jane growing more and more frustrated, while Roxy’s is unreadable. You can’t tell if they’re angry at you or at Jane, but their silence is starting to grate on you. “The first semester of the summer has already started but he’s nowhere to be found and neither of you said a word about it. So that leads me to believe that you knew he’d fall off the face of the Earth. Unless you want to convince me that you no longer give a shit about him.”

“Dirk, it’s not like that!” Callie insists, dropping their crochet hook onto the sofa and standing up. “It’s just… Just—” With each word, they sound even more desperate and unsure.

“Just _what?_ I know you guys are friends with him and I guess that means he tells you secrets, but I figured this would be something I should get clued on in before it fucking wrecked my mental state beyond repair, which is where I’m at right now,” you hiss. “Thanks a lot, guys, I’m so glad you can keep a fucking secret for your good ol’ buddy Jake and leave me out of your little circle.”

“Neither of them knew!” Jane shouts, bringing the attention back to her. “Jake didn’t tell either of them, he only spoke to me and he did it a couple of weeks before he left.”

You stare at Jane in shock, your ribs curling into themselves and digging into your lungs. You know you’re breathing kinda funny right now, but you’re sorta seeing red as you try to fight back the anger that is threatening to bubble up in your chest. She knew? All this time while you were trying to convince yourself that Jake would come back, she knew that he had left you for good? And despite your late-night calls in which you would tell her how afraid you were of him replacing you, she still refused to tell you?

“You… Fuckin’ knew?”

Jane is breathing hard as well but she nods. “He came to me and told me about the opportunity he was given to study abroad,” she explains, her voice softening as she talks. “He told me he really wanted to take it but that you had told him you weren’t comfortable with having a really long distance relationship so he wasn’t sure.”

You remember the last conversation about this you had with him. You remember laying naked on his chest after another round of late-night sex when he brought it up again, even after you gave him your two cents about it. You weren’t really eager about the idea of being apart for three months but it wasn’t like you had the resources that he had to fuck off to another college in another country for a semester. You would follow him if you could, really, you would, but also you don’t really want to be that guy. 

_“It would really be a great opportunity,”_ he whispered into your ear as he rubbed your arms gently, _“I really would like to go but I’d miss you quite terribly if I did.”_

The idea of Jake being in another country without you terrified you. It wasn’t that you didn’t trust him to be on his own, of course you trusted him. You just worried that he would go and that he would eventually meet someone who could match his same energy and that he would grow bored of you and seek company with this new person. You worried that with the inability to communicate frequently, his affection for you would dim out, or maybe he would come to the conclusion that he never wanted you in the first place. Well, now you don’t have anything to worry about because your worst fear came true.

But in the heat of the moment, you said nothing to him. Your fingers curled around his hand as you stared at your intertwined fingers. You couldn’t bear the thought of not being able to reach out and touch him anymore. Sure, distance and space make the heart fonder but not for you. Whoever the fuck coined that phrase was full of shit. All distance and space does for you is make you freak the fuck out and wonder if you’re truly meant to be alone. 

At the same time, you didn’t have the heart to tell him not to go. As much as you wanted to cling onto him, sink your nails into his skin, and stick to him like a human-sized parasite, you didn’t want to be controlling. You’ve been controlling before, not with him, but with other people, and you know where that gets you: nowhere. You’ve been possessive and paranoid before but you don’t want to do that with him. He deserves to be able to make his own decisions. If he wants to fuck out of the country, out of your arms, away from you, who are you to stop him? If Jake wants to just not be here with you anymore, that’s his decision.

_“Do whatever you want,”_ is what you decided. And it was left at that. He never brought it up again after that so you just thought he left it alone. Guess you were wrong. 

“But he took it. He didn’t tell me he was going to,” you reiterate. “You knew?”

She’s silent again, her expression finally breaking as she tries to find the words to say to you, but Roxy beats her to the punch, clapping their hands together.

“No, you know what, fuck this,” Roxy mutters as they storm out of the living room and head to where the bedrooms are. Callie and Jane call after them and you would too if you had the voice to do it, but you’re still reeling from Jane’s confession. Your legs feel weak, like at any moment you’re just going to collapse onto the floor. How are you even standing right now? 

Jane goes after Roxy, calling out to them, but she stops when they come out with their own phone, scrolling quickly through something. “Roxy, don’t!” She says, frustration lacing her words as she reaches to take it away from them.

“I’m not gonna keep lyin’ to his face like this!” Roxy hisses back at her, holding their phone away from Jane to keep it out of her reach. “Yes, it was Jake’s decision but Dirk has every right to know!”

“Know what,” you repeat sharply as you stare at them. “Roxy, what do I need to know.”

Your heart is thrumming loudly in your chest, its echo muffled in your ears. You already can’t breathe properly. If you didn’t know better, you’d assume you were one moment closer to dying right on the spot with the way your chests tightens. Everything around you seems to be going in slow motion and you watch as Jane and Roxy struggle with one another, Jane refuses to let go of Roxy’s arm that holds their phone. Callie rushes over to separate the two and once Roxy is free from Jane’s grip, they flash the screen at you. 

You take the phone from them, turning away from the chaos to focus on what’s on the screen, determined to find out what the fuck it is that Jane doesn’t want to let you see.

Jake English has had Dirk Strider erased from his memory. Please never mention their relationship to him again.  
Thank you.  
Dr. A. Serket

Okay. What the fuck.

Looking back at your friends, you can see the myriad of emotions painted over their faces. Concern, guilt, pity. All of them make humiliation burn inside your chest, roaring like a terrible desert fire. You hate the way they’re looking at you, Jane reaching out but appearing too afraid like you’ll shatter if she lays a single finger on you. You’re not fragile, you splinter but you don’t break, and despite everything that’s happened, you refuse to fall apart. Not in front of them. You don’t want them to see you like that. You already look pathetic as fuck, coming to them when they already knew this whole time.

“If this is a sick prank that Jake’s pulled out of his ass, it ain’t fucking funny. All of you are fucking assholes for following him,” You hiss, trying your best not to crush Roxy’s phone in your hands.

Jane shakes her head as she steps forward, her eyes glistening with tears. “No! God, no, Dirk, it’s not a prank! You know we wouldn’t do anything like that to you,” she says, her voice growing thick with emotion. “We all got that email a little after you told Roxy that Jake was upset but we weren’t sure what to do. We didn’t want to bring it up with him because… Who knows how he would’ve reacted but… He never mentioned you at all.”

You stare hard at her before looking back down at Roxy’s phone, turning it on to check the email again. It looks pretty real and official, even linking back to an official-looking website called _Scratch Inc._ , advertising itself as a memory alteration clinic. It has everything a clinical website would have, its goal page, a summary of their services, a page with pictures of their staff. Even a number to call in case you want to set up an appointment. 

Clicking back to the staff page, you stop at the first smiling profile, recognizing the last name as the one on the email. _Dr. Aranea Serket_. You’ll have to have a word with her. At least to make sure you really aren’t getting punked. 

The idea of there being a procedure that could erase bad memories from your brain sounds way too good to be true, like extremely good. It shocks you that it’s not something that hasn’t been advertised nationwide if it is something that actually works. Everyone would be getting it done, it’d be almost as common as getting your hair done every couple of weeks. Oh, had a bad experience? Not to worry, I’ll just get the Procedure done and get rid of any memory revolving around it! You’ll be good as new in no time, practically as innocent and untraumatized as a newborn.

God, there has to be a catch. Plus, the idea just seems so _wrong_ to you. If you’re able to erase specific memories from your brain reel, doesn’t that mean whatever you learned or developed from that incident just disappears? You can just whoosh your childhood trauma away? But won’t that just regress you a couple of years in development? Where does the clinic draw the line in what’s ethically correct to erase? Do they even have a line or are they just accepting without judgment?

“Dirk Strider?”

You shoot up from the seat and look over to see the lady at the desk looking at you with an unimpressed expression. She has her black hair tied up tight in a bun, dressed in red scrubs with a nametag hanging on her chest pocket that reads _Damara Megido_. She looks like she would rather be anywhere but here with the way she blinks up at you as you robotically make your way to the desk, trying not to step on anyone else’s feet. You give her a pisspoor attempt at a smile, but the muscles around your mouth seem to fail you. Figures.

She hands you a clipboard with a couple of papers and a pen on it. “Fill this out for me before Dr. Serket calls you back, allergies, current health conditions, whatever,” she draws out, a slight accent laced in her words. Sounds like her first language must be Spanish. “Hand me the clipboard when you’re done.”

“Oh uh, yeah,” you mumble as you take it from her, silently chastising yourself. You shuffle past the chairs again to take your original seat, avoiding the looks of the other patients around you.

Booking an appointment felt like it was going to be impossible with how packed the receptionist told you it would be. She was going to offer you an appointment in the next month until you insisted you needed to speak with Dr. Serket. Even though you weren’t thinking of getting the procedure done, you needed to talk to her and figure out if this really is happening or if it’s just some elaborate trick Jake set up just to get out of breaking up with you like a normal person. 

You have a copy of the email Roxy had sent you on your phone, ready to pull it up to show it to Dr. Serket. You’re not as upset with either of your friends anymore, having had time to let the discovery settle in your bones, and you’ve apologized to them despite them insisting that you had nothing to apologize for. They should’ve told you the moment it happened, it wasn’t fair that they left you hanging for a whole month like that.

And while you appreciate the apology, it’s not making the fact that Jake supposedly erased you from his memories any easier to stomach. Were you really that awful of a boyfriend that he just decided to completely remove you and any influence you had on him from his mind? That he would be happier if he never met you? Well, he looks pretty fucking happy in those pictures that he posted so you guess he made the right decision for himself. 

But what does that mean for you? Are you really willing to just carry the burden of the broken relationship on your shoulders for the rest of your life, move on with your life knowing that the person you were absolutely sure you were in love with erased you like you had meant nothing to him? That is so like him! To shrug off the responsibility of telling you how he felt and running off so you would deal with the consequences by yourself. Now you’re left with the shitty glass pieces, cutting your fingers every time you try to clean it up.

When you finish filling out the papers, you hand the clipboard back to Damara and sit down in your seat again, glancing around the room discreetly. You figured the clinic would be filled with young adults, all people trying to erase the memories of their broken relationships, just like you, but there are people from all walks of life.

An older woman with boxes overfilled with faded toys along with a picture frame with a sepia-tinted image, a father with his son carrying a garbage bag with a hole at the bottom that reveals a dirty tennis ball, a young teen girl carrying a large suitcase with scratched out stickers on it. All of them are carrying a deep hurt in their eyes as they look around idly, waiting desperately to be called up so that they can be relieved from their pain at the hands of this doctor. 

“Mr. Strider?” 

You look to finally see Dr. Serket standing at the door with a manila file in her hands before standing up, walking over to join her. She gives you a polite smile but you don’t have the energy in you to return it. 

“Yeah, that’s me,” you finally manage to say and she nods before gesturing to you to follow her. 

“Great, let’s go into my office so we can talk better,” she says as she begins to lead you through the winding corridors of the clinic.

The walls are an immaculate white so walking through them makes your head hurt a little and anxiety churns in your stomach. You can hear voices around you as you follow her, but they’re muffled and low, almost as if on purpose to prevent you from hearing anything you might not want to hear. As you pass the rooms, you can hear singing, laughter, crying, faint murmuring. All from different patients. It’s unnerving to hear them and not be able to see them, but you’ll chalk it up to your anxiety going through the roof with each second that passes. 

When you finally arrive at her office, she opens the door for you, letting you go in first before getting in herself. You sit down in the cushioned chair in front of the desk and fold your hands on your lap, listening to the click-clacking of her heels against the tiled floor. She finally sits behind the desk, pushing her chair in but still sitting straight in her seat, unlike you. She’s perfectly poised and polished, not a single hair out of place. You’d say you’re sorta intimidated as well as envious but you’re trying not to think about it too much. You came here to do one thing and one thing only.

“So, Damara tells me that you were made aware that you were erased from someone’s memory,” Dr. Serket begins, making no motion to sugarcoat it. You appreciate it, you really do. Ever since you’ve found out, anyone who knows about the incident has treated you like glass and it’s grating on your nerves, more than you expected it would. You just hate the way they talk to you so gently like you’re a child who doesn’t understand. You’re not a child and you certainly understand up to an extent the circumstances in which you’re in. At least this doctor won’t do that to you. 

But you’re still skeptical about everything so you let out a dry laugh as you look around the office. She has her diplomas on display behind her, which you assume look genuine. You would probably have to be closer to it to see if they were fake. And actually be able to tell the differences between a real and a fake diploma, which you don’t, but no one knows that. She certainly doesn’t.

“I guess I was,” you reply as you pull out your phone. “I still don’t really believe this is an actual thing that happened. I mean, that sounds way too sci-fi to be real, the part about being able to erase memories from a person’s brain. And even if it were real, shouldn’t the discovery made headlines? I feel like I would have heard more about this procedure if it was real,” you tell her, narrowing your eyes a little. Not that she would see it, of course. You’re still wearing your shades. 

Dr. Serket lets out a small laugh, almost in disbelief, and she shakes her head. “Whether you believe it or not is not really of my concern. It’s no longer science-fiction, Mr. Strider, but reality itself. It’s been something that has been in testing in many years in order to figure out if there is an invasive way to alter the brain and now I’m able to bring that successful procedure to the table,” she begins before settling her hands on the desk. “Who was it that you discovered to have erased you from their memory?”

Your teeth click slightly when you set your jaw and you look down to quickly pull out the copy of the email that Roxy had shown you, handing your phone cautiously to her. She takes it with careful hands, flipping the phone around to look at it properly, pushing up her white cat-eye glasses. She lets out a small nod of understanding and hands the phone back to you before settling back.

“Mx. English,” she repeats carefully, crossing one leg over the other as she sits back in her chair. “I’m not allowed to disclose any information about my clients but what I can say is that he wasn’t… He wasn’t very happy with his circumstances.”

It’s hard to keep a straight face when she says that. You’re not sure if you want to get angry at being told that or falling apart with guilt. The fact that Jake spoke to her about your relationship and even went as far as telling her that he wasn’t happy just makes something ache in your chest. He couldn’t even tell you that much and yet he told her too much. Was being with you really that bad?

You sigh deeply as you bend over in your chair, dropping your face into your hands. You still don’t want to believe that this is actually real. That the chance that Jake is just pulling a really elaborate prank on you is higher than it should be. Maybe you’re on one of those stupid prank shows and a camera is bound to show up the moment you start breaking down in front of Dr. Serket. That would just be perfect. 

“You’re still bein’ serious with me, Doc?” You reply as you look up at her. She nods solemnly before looking towards her computer, clicking away at something.

“I believe it’s unfortunate that you discovered it at all. I don’t think most people ever find out they’ve been erased or at least, they’ve never contacted us, so this is a bit of a first for me,” she says carefully before glancing towards you. “As an apology, I can offer the procedure to you at half the usual price.”

You stare at her, a sharp shock going through your bones. You could get the procedure too? Even as you were sitting there in the waiting room, it never occurred to you that you could get Jake erased from your mind too. Or that you would want to get him erased from your memory. Well, it’s only fair, considering he did it to you first. He saw you as a burden to his happiness so he got rid of you, wouldn’t it be alright for you to do the same to him? It’s not like he’ll find out any time soon or even care if you do. This would be for your benefit alone. 

Sitting up in your chair, you roll your shoulders back as you meet her gaze, trying to look aloof and uncaring. As if it doesn’t really matter whether or not you’ll get the procedure. As if you could go on living your life without ever caring about the fact that Jake completely removed you from his life forever.

“What do I have to do?”

A smile forms on her lips. 

She tells you to collect everything that Jake left behind, anything that would connect you to memories with him. Gifts, letters, photos, videos, printed messages that you sent back and forth. Maybe even clothes that he might have accidentally left behind. She would set a date up for you to come in and with those things, Damara would be able to make a map of your brain and find all the memories that she would erase. After that, they would take care of disposing of the material themselves so you don’t have to worry about dealing with unknown things in your dorm.

So, you do as she says. 

Going through your apartment, you stuff all of the things that Jake had left behind in a garbage bag, notes that he used to leave on your things, occasionally reminders to meet him somewhere after your last class, or shitty little doodles where he would write _“I love you!”_ in his messy handwriting, polaroids selfies of himself that would take while you were pretending not to look, polaroids of you when you definitely weren’t looking. You even throw in the toys he had gotten you, all of them shitty in their own way. He always knew you had a penchant for the weird and the ridiculous so whenever he came across something he found odd, he would immediately buy it for you, declaring it reminded him of you. 

“ _They’re our children now!”_ He said with a grin after he handed you an extremely modded teddy bear, its light blond fur dyed a toxic green and its face marked up like the _Joker_. You couldn’t help but laugh a little as you stared at the little guy, turning him around in your hands as you inspected his little tailored outfit. Whoever worked on him was certainly dedicated and good at their job, you were almost offended Jake found it at the thrift store. It felt like it belonged in an art display.

_“Pretty shitty amount of children we have,”_ you had replied as you looked back up at him. _“You haven’t even put a ring on it. You better take responsibility with how many kids you’re leaving me with and make an honest man out of me,”_ you joked back before placing the _Joker_ teddy along with its other shitty siblings on the shelf above your desk. 

Jake wrapped his arms around you, hugging you from behind, before sighing softly as he looked at your display. _“If I proposed, would you really say yes?”_

In retrospect, it was an honest question. The both of you were only one year into the relationship and even though you weren’t kids anymore, it was sort of a loaded question to think about. Even looking back at yourself from this point makes you cringe with the way you turned to look at him, silently shocked that he would even entertain the idea of you saying no to him. How had it not been obvious that you were madly in love with him? 

But you didn’t say that to him. You just stared at him for a brief moment before looking at your shitty plushies, leaning into his arms. _“Sure, I don’t see why not. If we got married, we would pay less in taxes,”_ you replied with a casual shrug, acting as if it didn’t mean much to you. Does marriage mean anything to either of you? Jake has always mentioned the idea of it made him feel intimidated, but that it was nice to think about in theory. He never explained why it made him feel that way but you always assumed it was because he hated being tied down, commitment issues, and the like. He had a long list of lovers you guess, relationships that went sour really quick, but you weren’t one of those lovers. Jake said that you were different. And you believed him.

On the other hand, the idea of marriage did terrify you. Growing up transgender _and_ gay made for a fucked up experience, unsure if something as simple as marriage would be available for you without the inclusion of children into the mix. Add the childhood trauma that you went through because of that, you’re pretty sure you’d make for a shitty father. If you didn’t want to exist, why would you push the same burden onto some poor hapless soul? Besides, you figured you were too fucking insane for anyone to want to hitch their wagon on your batshit horse, long enough to even consider the prospect of marriage.

But even so, Jake made it feel like a possibility. Maybe you could have that 50’s fantasy of white suburbia with the white picket fence, one dog, and the average 2.5 children. Hell, maybe you’d look good in a spotted dress and an apron, who fucking knows. The only problem was that you can’t cook for shit and you’re terrible at remembering to keep your dorm clean so you and Jake would have had to figure something out between the two of you.

Well, not anymore at least.

With everything shoved into the garbage bag, you found yourself back at the clinic, sitting in a dentist chair as Dr. Serket’s assistant, Damara, sticks tiny circles connected to wires around your head, minding your bleached locs. It makes you feel a bit self-conscious, mostly because your roots are growing in again as well as not being comfortable with people getting too close to you. You’ve just been too busy to touch them up yourself, too preoccupied with this Jake business. Maybe afterward you’ll remember to change up your hairstyle. Like how people in movies usually do after a particularly bad breakup. You might even dye your hair a different color. The possibilities are endless.

Dr. Serket slips on some gloves before picking up the garbage bag and pulling out a sketchbook. You can’t help but shift uncomfortably, wondering if she’s going to ask you to explain every item to her, but she meets your eyes once Damara pulls away from you to walk over to the computer. 

“You don’t need to say anything during this process. All I need you to do is react to every object I put in front of you. Damara will be using the computer to track every memory so when we do the erasing part of the procedure, it will only attack the memories revolving around Jake,” she explains carefully. “If you need to interact with the object, feel free to do so.”

You carefully pick up the sketchbook. It’s your personal sketchbook, not to be confused with the concept sketchbook that you use to come up with dark Muppet OCs and their edgy backstories. In this one, you basically dedicated it to your fleeting thoughts, mostly ramblings that you had during the night when you found it impossible to sleep. Sometimes you would draw in it, whatever you felt like drawing.

More than often, you drew Jake.

It’s embarrassing how many pages you have dedicated to your favorite parts of Jake. His soft hands that felt like he had never seen a hard day in his life, his eyes that lit up when he would talk about the cool bone diagram he saw in class that day, his gentle lips that he would press into a tight line in an attempt to keep himself from laughing at something stupid you did, his chest, his _smile_. The list goes on and on. You never showed him the sketches, too self-conscious that he would think of you as a creep for drawing him while he slept, and he respected you enough to never go snooping around. A part of you wishes he could’ve seen them, maybe he would see how much you adored him.

And then another part of you is thankful he didn’t. He doesn’t deserve to see the affection you had. 

You go through everything a second time, recalling every vague memory of each item you shoved in the garbage bag. You go through messages, pictures, songs, videos that you saved in a flash drive, as you were instructed, feeling your heart shrivel up further with each object. It was one thing to go through everything on your own in the privacy of your dorm where no one could hear you choking back sobs, but it’s another to have it being played out in front of two strangers, both of them looking at you with their clinical stares as you grip the deep blue armrests, forcing down your emotions as you rewatch the videos from your trip to California with Jake. 

_“Will this cause any… Brain damage?”_ You had asked Dr. Serket before she sat you down for the mapping of your brain. It was a dumb question, you know it was, but it was the only thing you could come up with as a pisspoor attempt to make conversation after unloading all of your issues into the voice recorder that she had placed in front of you. Apparently, she needed you to state out your reasons for erasing Jake to keep your file and information organized, should anything happen. You didn’t get it, but you weren’t going to fight it. You already hauled all your shit here, you might as well let it out. 

Dr. Serket made a small hum as she clicked around on her laptop and for a second, you assumed she hadn’t heard you, but she tears her eyes away from the screen, pushing back her black bangs from her face. “ _Technically, the whole process is brain damage,”_ she clarified before shaking her head. _“But it’s nothing too serious. If I have to compare it to anything, it would have the same effects as a heavy night of drinking.”_

You still don’t know how reassuring that is. You don’t drink often on your own, mostly because it does nothing but make you feel worse about yourself and sluggish, and honestly, you’ve been avoiding it after you noticed the way it made Jake act. You hated it when he drank too much, the way his words would slur and become incomprehensible. It makes you wonder if the procedure will even work considering how uptight your fucking brain is. What if your memories are so locked up tight, you just can’t forget anything and you’re doomed to shoulder the memories of a failed romance?

Figures it wouldn’t work for you. 

When you arrive at your dorm, you kick off your soggy sneakers, pushing them aside. You head into the bathroom to toss off your wet clothes, hang them over the shower curtain to dry, or at least to keep them somewhere until you remember to toss them in the washing machine. Hopefully, they don’t shrink when you do wash them. But that would be just your luck.

You take a quick shower before getting ready for bed, tying up your hair in a satin scarf and dressing in the pajamas that Dr. Serket gave you to wear for the procedure. Before brushing your teeth, you take the sleeping pills that she prescribed as well, specifically to knock you out completely so that you wouldn’t wake up during the erasing part. It’s then when you take a moment to yourself to stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror, wondering if this is the correct course of action. There’s no going back now, you’ve taken the pills that will put you to sleep and you’ll wake up in the morning a new man and with your heart intact. Every single memory of Jake will be gone as well as his influence on your life. You’ll go back to the guy that you were freshman year. 

You can’t remember if you liked who that was. Do you really want to go back?

Doesn’t matter now. You’re starting to feel drowsy. 

Before you can pass the fuck out and crack your skull on the bathroom sink, you brush your teeth quickly and head back into your room, kicking random shit under your bed to make it a little more presentable and hide anything you don’t want anyone to see. It’s only until your vision begins to blur that you give up, turn off the lights, and crawl into bed.

Nighty-night. 


	3. Flechazo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Flechazo (Spanish)_  
>  \- (noun) arrow wound  
> \- love at first sight  
> \- feeling that you've been struck by Cupid's arrow when you feel an intense connection with someone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy valentines day!! sorry for the late update but life got in the way (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀) hopefully this chapter makes up for it !!!

“Jeez, your phone is going off like an emergency alarm,” Roxy notes one day, eyeing your phone with a raised eyebrow. “Aren’t you popular all of a sudden?”

It’s been a week or so since Jake has given you his number so in the time that you haven’t seen each other, you’ve been in steady contact with him. Usually, it would be a nightmare considering you’re an awful texter, sometimes you forget to text back, reading the message before forgetting to reply, leaving it sitting for days before the next one arrives, but with him, you can’t help but reply immediately. He likes to spam you with walls of blue unprompted, usually about something that caught his attention, and you’ll reply with your own walls of grey. He doesn’t seem to mind, if anything, he might seem flattered at someone matching his energy.

He also likes to take pictures of things he thinks are cool or that you might find funny, sending them your way with a silly caption. You already thought he was sort of a dork with the way he carried himself, but he’s even more so through text, often roleplaying between asterisks. Who does that anymore unironically? And who can pull it off as smoothly as Jake does? Stupid question, no one can and no one will ever attempt it. It’s just one of those things that only he can do perfectly.

The only problem with Jake’s constant messaging is that you’ll practically drop anything to respond to him and it’s starting to get noticeable to everyone else around you. Like right now, you’re supposed to be studying with Roxy but you haven’t read a single page since you’ve arrived at their apartment, having been too engrossed to continue the important conversation with Jake on who deserves to be eaten first: _Ironman_ or _Batman_?

“Oh, uh yeah, I guess,” you mumble as you quickly finish your tirade, hitting send before setting your phone on the coffee table with the screen down. It’s a useless attempt to keep yourself from getting distracted, seeing as that the moment Jake texts you back, your phone will vibrate violently against the glass, making a loud clattering noise that is more distracting than the vibrating itself, and you’ll pick it up anyways. Good try though.

Roxy settles on the loveseat across from you, putting their legs up on the armrest. “Who are you talkin’ to?” They ask you, resting their laptop on their legs and reaching over to the coffee table to grab the bag of chips that they had gotten from the kitchen earlier. They pull it apart and toss a couple of chips into their mouth, looking at their report with disinterest. 

You press down your lips, unsure if it would be safe to reply just yet. You haven’t told anyone about Jake, mostly because you haven’t forgotten about what Jane had warned you about. You still have no idea what it is about him that had Jane talking like that and you don’t think it would be smart to ask Roxy about it yet. While Roxy won’t outright say the same thing as Jane, they might take her side on the matter if they know what Jane knows. Which, honestly, you wish you knew too. If there’s something going on, you just don’t see it. But it doesn’t help that you’re practically blind when it comes to Jake. 

“Just some guy that I met,” you mumble vaguely, glancing up at them for a moment before looking back down at your textbook. “Nothing special really.”

Your phone vibrates on cue, clattering against the glass, and the speed at which you quickly reach over to grab it so you can check if it’s a message from said _“some guy”_ exposes you as a terrible liar. One glance over at Roxy confirms that they definitely don’t believe you either. The gig is up.

“Some guy, huh? You don’t even respond to my texts that quickly so what gives, dude?” They say with a teasing laugh, looking away from you to focus on their report. You can hear them clicking on the keyboard for a moment before quickly backspacing, retracting whatever thought they had typed up. 

“It could be something important,” you mutter back, a bit distracted as you open up Jake’s message, only to be blinded by a cute picture of him posing with a cute dog he met today. God, he cannot be that cute _and_ be good with animals. He has to have _some_ flaw. Maybe he’s awful with kids. That’s gotta be it. But man, it’s hard to come up with something like that when everything about him seems so fucking perfect. He’s unreal.

“You just said it was some guy,” Roxy reminds you and you just grunt at them, typing up your response to Jake before tucking your phone under your leg. It’ll be less annoying than putting it on the fucking glass surface. You think so at least. 

“Yeah, and I stand by that.”

Roxy goes silent for a moment and you almost let a sigh of relief when you hear them click-clacking away at their laptop, assuming they’ve dropped the topic so that they can focus better on what they’re writing, but twenty minutes later after a couple more muffled buzzing texts, they tear their gaze away from the screen to look at you.

“So… You gonna tell me about him or…”

You try to fight back a sigh, unsure how to go about it without telling Roxy the full story. In retrospect, maybe visiting the café every day for almost a month straight just to find someone again doesn’t sound very romantic and instead appearing a lot creepier on paper, but hey, it worked. And it’s not like you were doing it maliciously, you really just wanted to see him again. It’s not like you followed him anywhere or tried to find out where he lived, you and him just happened to meet at the same place again. You weren’t even sure he would show up there again, it could’ve totally been a one time thing like it is with most people visiting places. There was no certainty that your paths would cross again. Besides, you do like the café anyways. They have good pastries. Who knew you had a sweet tooth? Not you.

“Uh, we met at the café,” you reply dumbly, avoiding their gaze as you look at your textbook, eyes glazing over the same line of information again. “I accidentally spilled coffee on him and fled the coop before I could get his name but uh, I guess that got him interested because the last time I went he sought me out. We talked a little and he gave me his number. He’s cool I guess.”

They let out a giggle-snort, kicking their legs in the air as they try to keep their laugh in. “You _spilled_ coffee on him and he _still_ wanted to talk to you?? That is one kooky meet-cute if I ever heard one!” Roxy replies, sounding amused by the idea. “Dirk, you cannot let go of this guy, he’s a keeper. Wait, is he cute though? He’s only a keeper if he’s cute.”

You finally look over at them, giving them a small glare. You don’t know how to express how cute Jake is without looking whipped as all hell. He’s not even cute, he’s beautiful. A perfect combination of handsome and beautiful, you can’t even name his best features. He’s one of those people whom you don’t know if you want to date them or b _e_ them, he’s just… Lovely.

“Yeah, he’s okay, I guess,” you say dully before looking back at your book, lifting your hand to your mouth to bite at the skin at your nails. You really gotta stop doing that but addiction is a powerful thing.

“Oh, you’re full of shit!” Roxy exclaims and before you know it, they toss one of those decorative pillows at you, knocking you straight in the face. “I know you’re fuckin’ lying so just give me the deets! I wanna know all about this guy who’s got you jumpier than a grasshopper on hot concrete!”

You huff as you grab the pillow and use it to pretend-threaten them with it but instead you tuck it behind your back to make yourself more comfortable on the couch. “It’s really not a big deal, Roxy. It’s just some guy that I met, nothing less, nothing more,” you insist, hoping that they will just drop it.

It’s not that you don’t trust Roxy, you actually do. You would trust Roxy with all your material possessions and more if you were in danger. But you’re not sure how much they share with Jane and if Jane finds out you’ve been seeking Jake out purposely… You’re not sure how well that conversation will go down with her. You’re not scared of Jane, not in the least, but you really don’t like the face she makes when she’s disappointed with you. It’s not very nice.

They give you a look and you groan before giving in. You can’t say no to them for long. “Okay— Fuck, fine, if you really want to know, you have to promise me not to tell Jane about this,” you tell them, looking them dead in the eye to make sure that they know that you’re serious about it. Their eyes widen a little in response but they lift their hand in a salute.

“Scout’s honor, but can I ask why?” They ask, raising an eyebrow at you.

You swing your legs to the floor, sitting up on the couch properly, and automatically your knee begins to bounce anxiously. Instinctively, you glance towards the entrance, not wanting to begin telling Roxy about Jake and have Jane suddenly bust into the room in the middle of it. You know Jane isn’t home because Roxy told you that she’d be out during the afternoon. School events and whatnot.

“I sorta… Made a promise to her that I wouldn’t talk to this guy for whatever reason. She was being cagey as fuck about why I shouldn’t so I don’t really get why it’s such a big deal, but I just don’t want her to find out in case it really is a big deal,” you explain quietly, your eyes shifting from Roxy to the door. “I mean, I talked to him and nothing about him comes off as “secretly might be a criminal” or whatever so that’s off the list. I’m just assuming he said something that rubbed Jane the wrong way and now she’s got a personal vendetta against him, I dunno.”

They shrug at you. “I dunno either, bro. Jane still sometimes has the same attitude a white suburban mom with three kids and a minivan has against a really tattooed guy with piercings towards people she doesn’t know. She’s workin’ on it but like I get what you’re sayin’,” they reassure you. 

“Yeah, so I don’t know if you know him either, but he goes to the same college as us. Apparently, he just came back from a semester overseas which makes sense why I’ve never seen him around until now but uh,” you pause, reaching behind you to pull your bleached locks out of the loose bun that you had tied them in. “His name is Jake.”

This certainly brings a reaction out of Roxy. They scramble from their relaxed position on the couch to sit straight up, almost knocking their laptop off their legs, and stare straight at you. “...Jake?”

You pause in your actions, having gathered up your locks again to tie them properly, and stare back at them in confusion. “Do you know him…?” You reply hesitantly, wondering if they know what it was that had Jane on edge.

They shake their head quickly, their pink curls bouncing as they move. “Well! I mean, I dunno! What’s his last name? Jake’s a pretty common name. Especially with white guys. Lots of white Jakes.”

“English. And despite the surname, he isn’t white.”

You almost fear that their eyes are going to bulge out of their sockets from how big their eyes are getting but you don’t point it out, hoping that Roxy might share some insight, but it never comes. 

They scratch at the back of their head, looking away from you. “Is he… Nice?”

“Yeah, considering the fact that I made him spill his coffee and left him hanging, he’s practically a saint. Anyone else would’ve immediately ran after my tiny ass to give me a what-for,” you reply, shrugging casually. “He has a lot of interesting stories to tell and I like listening to him.”

Roxy gives you a nod and moves to lay back on the couch, returning to their original position with their computer on their lap. “That’s… Nice,” they force out awkwardly. You nod with them and do the same, putting your textbook back on your lap and opening back up to the page you were on previously. 

Awkward silence settles between you two and you sorta feel annoyed about this whole thing. It’s obvious that Roxy knows about whatever Jane’s deal about Jake is but they won’t say a word to you. You don’t really like being left out of the loop from these sorts of things. What did he do? Did he and Jane have a fight? Were they friends? Was Jake one of Jane’s awful boyfriends from her comp-het phase? Okay, that one you’ll scratch off the list because you would’ve known if he had been part of that. You had met Jane during her last runs when she was insisting she only liked men. Truly the darkest moments for your dear friend.

“Hey…. Dirk?” Roxy begins, popping the negative cloud surrounding you. You look over at them to let them know that you’re listening, but they don’t look up. “Promise me to be careful, okay?”

“Sure, Roxy, I promise,” you reply.

You’re not even sure what to be careful of. 

* * *

You and Jake decide on a Saturday to hang out. 

Because of midterms, you’ve both been swamped with catching up with work that you still have yet to turn in as well as work that is due before the exams. The weekend after them will be the only one you’ll both have to chill out before it’s time to hit the saddle again, preparing yourself for class once more. 

At first, neither of you are sure of what you want to do. Nothing too exhausting because you know if you have to do something that requires effort, you’ll be one unhappy customer and the last thing you want is for Jake to find that sometimes you’re a real, big bitch when you’re tired. You’re not even that mean, you’re just whiny. Yeah, you’ll admit it. You’re whiny as all hell when you don’t want to do something. 

Jake makes the suggestion to just chill out at a diner that he likes and you can see where the day takes you afterward. If you’re still very tired, you can call it quits after a while, and if you have some energy, you two can go out and do something more fun. Maybe visit an arcade, or even head to his place to play some video games. You don’t have to commit just yet. Whatever you want, Dirk.

That sounds good to you, you tell him and once you both settle for an exact time, he sends you two water gun emojis and a wink before saying, _“Cool! Sounds like a date!”_

Yeah, a date.

You would like to pretend like you didn’t reread that message over and over again, your cheeks heating up like a metal slide in July. The muscles in your face ache so badly from how hard you were trying to keep yourself from smiling at his dorky reply. It’s awful how much control he has over you without him knowing. He must have a clue by now, right? Anyone in their right mind would’ve noticed when someone has the hots for them if they were anything like you. You’re so obvious, but he hasn’t said anything about it. You don’t even know if the date thing was just him teasing you or just something he says. What if he says that to everyone who invites him out? What if you’re not special?

You set your phone upside down on the table and rest your cheek onto the palm of your hand, unable to stop the frown growing on your face. Here you go raining on your own damn parade. Honestly, it’s pretty stupid of you to assume that he would ever want to date you. He’s literally Mx. Perfect with his only flaws being shitty movie tastes and weird movie star crushes. He could have anyone in the world if he wanted, why would he settle for you?

“Aw, what’s with that expression, love?” Callie’s voice pops you out of your thoughts and you look up at them as they bring over a plate of blueberry muffins, freshly taken out from the cooking pan. You can still feel the heat radiating off them and the smell makes your mouth water a little. Fuck, it’s been a while since you’ve had a baked good of any kind. Just the smell makes you feel like you’re expecting something. Did you accidentally Pavlov’s dog yourself? 

“Just… Thoughts,” you say vaguely, waving the weird train of thought from your mind. “Did you bake those?” You tack on dumbly, wanting to change the topic before you end up spilling your heart out to Callie. No doubt they would understand, maybe even offer sage words of advice, but you feel awkward about it. You don’t like talking about these thoughts. 

“Of course! Janey hasn’t had much time to teach me seeing as she’s busy these days, but I thought I would pull up a video from the Internet and teach myself!” Callie declares proudly, setting the muffins in the middle of the table. “Once they’ve cooled down enough, you’re welcome to take as many as you like. As long as you leave one for Roxy and Jane, of course,” they add on with a smile.

“Haha, yeah, if I jack their respective pastries, I just know they’ll make me pay with my life,” you joke lightly before focusing your gaze on the table, following the patterns with your eyes. You hear Callie head over to the sink, preparing to start washing the dishes. 

“Goodness, I highly doubt that they would come to that decision, but I do know that they’ll be rather upset with you. It would not be the first time that you stole something from them, remember?” They reply with a small laugh. It takes you a moment to think about it, but you can’t feel anything come up in which you stole something from them.

You turn around in your chair to look at Callie. “When have I done that?” You ask, feeling rather dumb. No matter how hard you think about it, you just keep coming up blank. It’s really fucking possible you did and just don’t remember. It’s not like you have a stellar photographic memory, but at the same time, if you had, you would’ve had a vague notion of the memory instead of a blank loading screen.

“You don’t remember?” Callie asks as they turn to look at you, almost astounded at the idea of you forgetting something. “It was when you and oh—”

They stop themselves automatically and you stare at them expectantly to finish their sentence, but they don’t. Instead, they laugh a little awkwardly before shaking their head, looking back into the sink as they pick up the plate they had begun to scrub. 

“Oops, sorry, I think I must have confused you with Dave,” they say quickly. Callie has always been a terrible liar and you know damn well that there’s no way they could’ve confused you for your brother. It’s not like either of you looks similar enough to the point that someone could confuse you both. Plus, you’re certain Callie has spoken to Dave a handful of times, certainly not enough for them to really remember him fondly in any way. But you could be wrong. Maybe they’ve hung out for some reason? You didn’t think Callie and Dave would get along but then again who doesn’t like Callie? Save for their brother.

“You’ve got some hot goss about my lil bro?” You ask, wanting to push the topic. It’s starting to get annoying how your friends keep dancing around certain topics, making it obvious as all hell that they’re keeping something from you. You wish you could let it go, trust that they’re hiding it for some good reason, but at the same time, you feel like you’re being coddled by them. You’re not a fucking child and you certainly don’t need to be coddled so what gives? What’s so fucking dangerous that they need to be tiptoeing around you like ballerinas avoiding shards of broken glass on the floor?

Callie tenses up but recovers quickly, trying to scrub harder at the plate, picking at whatever leftover residue that refuses to come off. “Oh, it was just this one time that um, Dave paid Roxy a visit with Rose and he took something that belonged to them and Jane and they pitched quite a fit about it!” They say quickly, letting out a forced laugh as they pointedly stare down into the sink. “Honestly, at first they blamed each other for it being gone but then I so kindly reminded them that Dave might have taken it! Then the next time he came around, they really just… let him have it…!”

You listen intently, watching the way they shift awkwardly in their spot. They still won’t look at you but the way they talk makes it sound like they’re trying to convince themselves of what had happened instead of telling you. Their expression is too exaggerated and unnatural to their mannerisms. You really just wish they would tell you the truth. 

“Mhm, sounds like a Dave thing to accidentally start shit between people. Really discourse-worthy,” you reply idly, turning back to the plate of muffins on the table. Grabbing a napkin, you set it in front of yourself before reaching out to grab a muffin. It’s still pretty hot so you almost drop it the moment you touch it but you hold on with a hiss, dropping it quickly on your napkin. 

“Haha, yes. Classic Dave,” they agree as they continue washing the dishes, the plates clattering gently against each other. “Are the muffins still hot?”

You hum in reply, licking your burnt fingers. “Yeah, burned myself picking one up but I got it. Once it’s not as hot as the devil’s anus, I’ll be popping that shit into my maw. The smell is driving me crazy, I feel feral,” you joke. “You might just be better than Jane when it comes to muffins because these smell like angels have molded them with their own hands and cried on them. Are those sugar crystals? Fuck no they’re not, that’s the eye crust that fell from their eyes after they cried into the fucking bowl. Absolute perfection.”

“Angels don’t have hands,” Callie calmly reminds you, the tension had disappeared from their voice.

“Sure they do, or else that’s going to be a problem once I take a bite out of this muffin. Who’s going to hold my limp body to hoist me onto Sky Daddy’s lap once I pass away from how heavenly this tastes?”

“Oh shush, now you’re speaking nonsense,” they say with a laugh, rinsing off the soaped up dishes. “I doubt they are _that_ amazing, even more so to rival those of Jane’s. I think you’ve just picked up a pastry addiction after spending so much time in that café. What were you doing there anyway? And going there so often?”

You shrug in reply, poking your muffin to test how hot it is. “I liked their stuff there, nothing else to it,” you say simply before proceeding to pick off a piece, blowing on it carefully and then stuffing it into your mouth. “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to chill in one place for a long time.”

“It’s not that you’re not allowed, it’s that you tend to have a reason for everything that you do,” Callie points out to you. You hadn’t noticed that they knew this about you. Does everyone know this? “You’re not one to act without reason.”

You glance back at them, studying them for a moment. You’ve already told Roxy about Jake and told them not to tell Jane about it but you’re not sure if they would’ve told Callie. You trust Callie, not as much as you trust Roxy, but you do trust them. You know if you made them promise to keep this from Jane, they would carry the secret to the grave. You’re just not sure how they're going to react. 

“Am I really that easy to read? Damn, and I thought my facade was unbreakable. I guess they’re right about walls, someone’s always gonna get past ‘em,” you joke quietly before continuing to pick carefully at your muffin, unsure what else to say.

Callie lets out a small sigh behind you, silent for a moment. “It’s not that! I actually find you very difficult to read considering you’re not very expressive, mister, so I can assure you that your walls remain impenetrable as always, but!” They put an emphasis on the last word, stopping in their actions, and you have to crane your neck to look back in their direction. “We have been friends for quite some time and I feel like I’ve been able to pick up on some of your mannerisms. And if it’s not something I’ve discovered on my own, it’s because Roxy or Janey has told me.”

You raise an eyebrow at them, putting your elbow back over the top of your chair, slightly shifting your body to face them better. “Would it be a fair assumption for me to make in saying that they tell you a lot of things?” You ask carefully. Maybe you can worm the answer to what Jane’s deal with Jake is from Callie if you play your cards right.

They don’t seem to suspect anything so far, or at least, they don’t make it known that they do when they stare at you. They laugh a little and shrug, pausing to rinse the soap off their hands before drying them. “Well, they certainly do tell me a lot of things! That’s how humans communicate, isn’t it?” They say with a teasing look, pulling away from the sink so they can join you at the table. 

As they come over, you turn back in your chair to face your muffin. “I mean, like… Secrets or something. Fuck, that sounds sketchy as fuck, doesn’t it? No, I don’t mean secrets, I mean like… Some stuff,” you stumble over your words, gesturing vaguely with your hands. Damn it, you’re going to blow your cover now.

Callie reaches over you to grab their muffin and takes a bite out of it. “What are you attempting to get at, Mr. Strider?” They ask curiously, tilting their head at you before continuing to bite at their pastry.

Fuck, yeah, it had been a dumb attempt to try to dance around the topic. See, this is what you were talking about when it comes to being blunt. Every time you try to handle a conversation with the utmost delicacy, it comes crashing down on you like the world’s shittiest house of cards. You’re as graceful as an elephant learning ballet, the wood stage splintering every time you take a careful leap through the air. In your attempt to approach the conversation with velvet gloves, you’ve dropped and shattered it like a really shitty vase. Kiss, kiss, fall in love and all that. Except instead of financial debt, you just feel really stupid.

“I should’ve just outright said it, huh?” You mumble as you rest your hand on the table, drumming your fingers quietly on the surface. 

“Honesty is usually the best policy,” Callie agrees with a nod. 

“Right, fuck. Okay, so Jane told me about… This person. Told me that I shouldn’t get involved with but never really gave me a solid reason and you know how I feel about vague shit like that,” you explain quickly, occasionally looking up at them to make sure they’re following. “And I tried to ask Roxy about Jane’s deal with this guy but they didn’t want to say anything either so I was just wondering if you know about anyone who has ever made the mistake of slighting Jane somehow. 

Callie presses their lips together in through, their eyebrows furrowing, and they let out a thoughtful hum. “Care to drop the name? Jane has a bit of a list of people she’s had much to say about, seeing as she’s the one who interacts with more people than Roxy and I combined,” they say with a sheepish laugh. 

You’re hesitant to do it but it’s now or never. If Callie can’t tell you, there goes you ever finding out what the fuck your friends are hiding from you because you’re absolutely sure that Roxy and Jane are hiding something. 

“Jake English. Does the name ring any bells?”

Their eyes widen and for a moment you feel like they’re staring straight past you. Oh, they definitely do recognize the name. Just like your other friends. If you’re a locked grimoire, Callie’s an open library book.

It’s almost as if the world’s on pause with how slow it takes for them to come back to their senses, their green eyes focusing back on you. “Oh? Is that their name? Never heard of them before,” they quickly say before stuffing the rest of their muffin into their mouth and walking away to recontinue the task of washing the dishes. 

You stand up immediately, your chair scraping back against the floor. “Callie, with all due respect, you’re a pretty shitty liar,” you call them out, watching the way they tense up, their face pointed away from you to avoid your eyes. “All three of you are shit at hiding whatever it is you’re hiding and I’m sorta gettin’ annoyed at being run in circles like this. I’m not a little kid and I’m certainly not dumb so if there’s anything you’d like to tell me, now’s the time.”

Callie is silent for a while, looking down at the dirty dishwater that has accumulated in one of the bowls that they had been washing. You can almost hear the gears in their head turning as they try to find a way out of the situation or maybe weighing how badly this might affect their relationship with Jane if they were to tell you what the deal was. Well, if that’s the case, they’ll probably shut you down. Their relationship to Jane is a lot stronger than their relationship to you, seeing as they’ve known each other longer than you’ve known Callie.

They finally look up at you, their eyebrows furrowing as they study your expression. They look frustrated, which you don’t really get considering it’s not them that are being lied to and poorly at that. Is it really that hard for them to just tell you the truth?

“Why exactly do you want to know about them?” Callie carefully asks, staring hard at you. 

It’s your turn to get defensive. You cross your arms as you look up at them, and god _fuck_ , they are really tall. Why is every single person in your friend group so damn tall? 

“Because I’m interested in him. We met a while back and we started to talk, even though Jane told me it’d be best to avoid him. Despite that, I can’t see what her problem is because he just sounds like a genuinely nice guy,” you confess, shifting your weight on your feet. Their eyes widen a little in surprise before becoming concerned again.

“You are talking… With Jake?” They repeat. It almost sounds like they’re in disbelief. Whether it’s disbelief about you talking to someone outside of your friend group or disbelief that you’re talking to him specifically, you don’t know and you’re not completely sure. Both ideas annoying you because 1) you’re not a fucking child, of course, you can talk to other people, 2) no one has given you a valid reason to not talk to him, and 3) if it was such a big deal, why didn’t they do a better job about hiding him? 

“Yes, I’m talking with him. He’s a cool guy and he’s kind of a dork, what’s the big deal here?” You insist, furrowing your eyebrows at this. “Why is it so bad that I’m talking to him, Callie?”

They don’t answer you, their gaze focusing back onto the dirty dishes. Their face is scrunched up with frustration, their mouth opening and closing as they try to come up with a proper answer to give you. 

Instead, they say, “I think it’s for the best that you listen to Janey, Dirk. I can’t tell you more than that.” And it’s all you need to set you off. 

“Fuck, fine. Don’t tell me,” you grumble, pushing in your chair and heading out of the kitchen. “Let me know when you three stop treating me like I’m fragile. You know where to find me.”

You can hear Callie call you back into the kitchen but you ignore them, grabbing your jacket that you had left on the couch and heading out of the apartment. Your cheeks are flushed with anger, something that becomes worse when you reach the outside, the cold biting ruthlessly at your skin. You try to ignore the cold as you follow the crowd of people, heading back to your dorm. No doubt your friends will be blowing up your phone in a couple of hours. You’ll answer them later when your anger drains out but for now, you’ll stew in frustration. At least until you forget and/or get distracted. You can never stay mad at them for too long. They’re your only friends after all. 

* * *

You can’t stop worrying.

Everything feels so wrong as you stare at yourself in the mirror, trying to decide if you should change your pants or your shirt, or hell, even your hair. You already spent the entirety of yesterday and a little bit of this morning retouching your roots and twisting your hair. Now when you look at yourself in the mirror, you wish you could’ve gone to the barber earlier this week so you didn’t have to deal with the annoying urge to change everything about your look. You want to look good for this date, you want Jake to look at you and fucking swoon when he sees you. You want him to feel the same way that you do when you see him. 

Your phone vibrates on the bed and you have to stop yourself from launching yourself to it like some sort of human rocket to check it. You have a couple of messages from Roxy, another one from Jane, and an apology from Callie, but you ignore them in favor of getting to the messages that you’re currently more interested in Jake’s.

It’s not like you’re purposefully avoiding your friends, no, you’ve actually apologized to them for being sort of a dick a while back, specifically being a dick to Callie, but now it’s made things awkward for all four of you. They all step around you like they’re trying to avoid broken glass, constantly starting their messages with an apology before asking you something innocent. It’s rather frustrating and just a tad bit annoying, but you’ll let it go. It’ll just fade away someday and stop being a problem. Preferably soon once you and Jake start dating for real and you can introduce him as your boyfriend without it being a federal fuckin’ issue. If Jane won’t give you a proper response to staying away from him, then you guess they’ll just have to deal with him being your future spouse.

You take a deep breath as you open his message up, unable to hide the nervous smile that snakes onto your face. To say you’re excited would be the understatement of the year. Your stomach feels like it’s going to shrivel up in your abdomen with how hard it keeps twisting and turning with anticipation. Your sweaty hands tremble as you text him back, letting him know you’ll join him outside in a second, gotta get your coat. God, it actually feels sorta warm in the room and you’re almost positive that you’re so close to breaking out into a sweat from how anxious you are. Ugh, gross.

Slipping on your warm jacket and shoving your wallet and keys into your pocket, you give your mirror one final lookover, making sure that your hair looks fine, before leaving your apartment and heading outside of the dorms where Jake is waiting for you.

It’s cold outside, that much you expected when you stepped foot outside. The both of you settled with getting something warm to eat before heading to his place to play some video games so you didn’t have to suffer too much outside in the cold. The weather is actually calling for snow tomorrow so you’ll have to leave tonight to avoid getting snowed in at Jake’s place. Which, you wouldn’t exactly mind, but you’re not sure where this date is going to go so you’ll safely assume it won’t go anywhere besides an innocent dinner and game night. You don’t mind. 

The cold evening air bites into your skin and you curse yourself for not having grabbed a scarf before leaving, but it’s too late to go back inside for one because Jake is in front of you now and he looks so happy to see you, his brown cheeks flushed a warm red from the cold as well. Fuck, even the tip of his nose is bright red and it makes you wonder how long he’s been waiting out here. Oh shit, did you make him wait too long?

“Hey!” He chirps excitedly as you walk over to him. He’s wearing a long, dark fur coat, but you can tell he’s wearing a skirt under it along with some warm leggings you hope. You can’t help but wonder if he had agonized over his outfit hours before he came over just like you did. The image of him looking unsure in the mirror as he sifts through outfits makes your heart stutter slightly. You doubt he’d be unsure considering he could possibly make _anything_ work but it’s cute to think about.

God, you really have it bad already.

“Hey,” you reply, attempting to give him a smile but it feels forced and foreign on your face. The muscles on your face seem to panic, pulling at any random string of meat to form something akin to a positive expression before shrugging. _This is the best we can do, Boss_ , they tell you in a cheesy Italian accent like some sort of mob boss goon. You just pray to any merciful deity that Jake won’t notice and if he does, he’ll think it quirky or something. You just love it when people romanticize your flaws. Makes you feel like a real manic pixie dream girl. 

Jake laughs a little but you’re not sure if he’s laughing at you or just because he pities you. Or maybe it’s one of those awkward but polite laughs that people do when they’re not sure what to say. You’re a master at receiving those. You’re not sure what it is about you but you tend to blurt out the weirdest shit that has people staring at you and laughing awkwardly, probably silently wondering why anyone has ever allowed you to speak ever. No one can shut you up. Not for long anyway.

But he doesn’t seem to be awkward. He’s smiling genuinely at you. “Are you sure you’re going to go out like that? It’s pretty cold, Dirk,” he asks, glancing up and down at your clothes. Sure, your jacket doesn’t lift a finger to Jake’s fur coat, but you won’t sacrifice style for comfort. You’re not weak. Not that Jake is weak for choosing a better-suited outfit for the weather though. He really rocks that whole outfit. He even decided to put on light makeup that accentuates his best features like his eyes and his lips. In Roxy’s words, you would say Jake’s outfit is a whole Look™. 

“Nah, it’s fine, I barely feel anything,” you reassure him with a quick wave of your hand. The frosty air nips angrily at your fingers and you try to casually slip your hands back into your pocket, hoping that Jake doesn’t notice the slight desperation in your motions. Fuck, maybe you could’ve at least brought gloves. You’re from Texas, you weren’t meant for this shit type of weather. 

He doesn’t seem to believe you though, rolling his eyes, but he lets it go, turning away from you. “Alright! Let’s go then. I’ve got the perfect place to eat at but we have to hurry before the dinner rush,” he says as he begins to walk in the direction of the subway station that lies a little bit off-campus. “They sell the best bacon cheeseburgers that I’ve ever had in the area! And also some really delicious milkshakes.”

“That would sound great if I wasn’t lactose intolerant,” you remark, trying to joke a little as you follow him, keeping your eyes forward. “Severely might I add. Even just the sight of it is enough to get my stomach doing somersaults and send me runnin’ to the nearest men’s room. I always pray for the poor employee that has to go in after me to clean up the evidence of the crime.”

You look up at him when he says nothing to find him staring at you in surprise. Fuck, why did you insinuate that milk gives you explosive diarrhea? A shit joke? Really? On the first date? You and Rose have always ragged on Dave for making poop jokes along with dick jokes and the occasional MILF joke when he got nervous, but here you are, doing the same as he would. You sorta get why he does it though. The opportunity was there and you took it without thinking it through. This is why you should probably keep your filter on. At least until after the third date. Or whenever you fuck, if you ever get there.

But Jake laughs again and it’s like relief crashes over you like you’ve taken part in a bukkake involving soothing balm instead of a bunch of guys’ nasty bro goo. You like the way he laughs, his shoulders shaking as he tries to keep his snickers in. “You’re a real oddball, you know that?” He asks when he looks at you again. 

“It’s been implied. I’ve had psychology majors tell me that they’d love to study me, so I think it’s a win,” you joke lightly.

Jake grins. “If they ever do, I’d like to read their findings. I’m sure you’ve got an interesting brain behind that skull of yours!” He jokes innocently. Little does he know, the idea of him ever getting to see inside of your thought process sorta scares you more than you’d like to admit. He’s better off never finding out what goes inside your brain or how you tick. Sure you’d like to make him a permanent fixture in your life, but to make that a reality, he can never actually know all of you. Only the cool parts about yourself. 

But to be honest, you’ve been doing a shitty job in regards to that. Every encounter you have with him seems to involve you doing or saying something completely stupid. It’s like your mouth and your brain are working against each other. You’ve got to get a grip on yourself before you end up scaring Jake away for good. 

“You better wish them luck then. I won’t be letting anyone in that easily into the old Strider mindscape. If they want to pry open the bear trap that is my mind, they’ll have to have _Superman’s_ strength and possibly be as handsome as him,” you reply. You can’t deny _Superman_ is hot as fuck. You hated _Batman V. Superman_ in all sincerity but something about _Henry Cavill_ in that grungy, skin-tight super-suit had you feeling a little breathless in the theater. If he flew up to you and asked you to be his next _Lois Lane_ , you’d open more than your mind to him. 

“ _Superman_ is very handsome. It’s hard to compete with a guy like him,” Jake agrees with you, nodding slightly. “But which _Superman_ are we talking about here? Movie-wise, personally, my favorite is from _Superman Returns_. _Brandon Routh_ is quite good-looking.”

You almost stop in your tracks. “What the fuck? Seriously? _Brandon Routh_?” You repeat in horror. He stops just a little bit before you and turns to face you, raising an eyebrow. “He’s so boring. Like sure he’s good-looking, I guess, but I can barely remember a moment where he’s actually showing some emotion. Plus, _Superman Returns_ fucking sucked.”

Instead of looking offended, there’s a glitter in Jake’s eyes and he brightens up, grinning slightly. “I never said _Superman Returns_ was a good movie, I simply believe _Brandon Routh_ is one the more pleasing on the eye compared to any other actor that has played the favored _Man of Steel_!” Jake replies, sounding amused. “If we really must talk about which one of the many _Superman_ movies is the best, I’d have to turn in my ballot to vote for _Batman V. Superman_.”

Your mouth almost drops in shock. His taste in movies is horrendous. 

Why does that make your heart skip a beat? This should completely turn you off. 

And yet. 

His response sets you off on a whole tirade, discussing exactly why _Batman V. Superman_ fucking sucks, and no, it has nothing to do with the fact that you hated _Ben Affleck_ as _Batman_. You guess he was decent. Maybe he would’ve done better if the plotline and the pacing were done a lot better than whatever the fuck happened in that trainwreck of a movie. You know what, you take back what you said about _Henry Cavill_. Fuck him too, you hated that movie entirely. 

Jake doesn’t seem to get angry with you though, taking every response and returning it with a witty retort of his own. He doesn’t seem at all bothered by how many points you bring up to shit on his favorite movie, if anything he seems to be having fun, laughing at various moments. This is serious business to you. You’re a pretty big fan of _DC_ , more about _Batman_ but you dabble in _Superman_ comics on the occasion too. You could argue about comics for _days_.

By the time you get seated at the diner Jake had been leading you to, you’ve lost all your breath, sitting down in the booth, and watch as Jake shrugs his coat off first before setting it aside and sitting down. He still doesn’t seem all that annoyed with you despite your ranting all throughout the subway ride. 

“So, you’ve got nothing to say in return?” You ask, wanting to claim your first victory. 

He picks up the menu that was laid on the table and begins to flip it over, looking over it casually. “Nope! Not a thing to say here,” Jake finally says before glancing up at you. “I just think it’s cute how you worked yourself up into a tizzy over something like that. I didn’t think you’d actually get so technical about that movie to actually bring up some good points that I hadn’t considered. Usually, when I try to debate others on it, it comes down to _“this movie sucks because you’re stupid!”_ sort of thing,” he finishes, looking pleased with himself. “I know the movie is bad, but I still had fun watching it.”

So, he was just… Baiting you?

Wow, you kinda hate how it fucking worked. He played you like a fiddle in getting you to tire yourself with your own argument and was actually listening to everything you were saying? You rarely let anyone get a rise out of you when it comes to discussions like this, always wanting to keep a level head so that when your opponent finally gives up, you look extra cool. But Jake just took you in stride, letting you spin yourself into circles, while he sat on the sidelines, watching you become a one-man show. 

Anyone else would’ve stopped you at any point in time to call you annoying or to even say _“it ain’t that deep”_ , but he listened to every single thing you said and even called you _cute_. 

“You’re weird as fuck, English,” you finally say to him, picking up your own menu. It sounds harsher than what you’re actually thinking, but it only makes him giggle.

“It’s been implied,” he says, throwing your words back at your face. You glance over at him from the top of your shades, unable to stop yourself from admiring his expression. He’s still smiling as he looks over the menu, completely unfazed, and for some reason, the fact that he’s handling this perfectly well makes your heart do double-dutch in your chest. 

Like you’ve said before, you don’t really make connections easily, much less romantic ones. You’ve had relationships before, a handful of them, most of them ending up in anti-climatic breakups once they realize that the sex isn’t good enough for them to put up with your neurotic bullshit, but none of them have ever gotten this close to where you feel almost comfortable being well, yourself, around Jake. Fuck, and this is basically the first date. Imagine what it would be like if Jake sticks around. 

You really hope he sticks around.

You try not to let your insecurities sink into your mind as Jake talks with the waitress, pointing to what he wants as he casually discusses what would be the better option with her, but it’s hard. Jake genuinely seems like the perfect guy, charming and beautiful, goofy and smart. He’s just too perfect, there _has_ to be a catch here. Not to mention whatever it is that he had going on with Jane. You’re still planning on figuring that out but not yet. There’s no reason to ruin a perfectly good mood with something that could potentially bring up bad memories.

The face-less waitress leaves after you give her your order taking your menus with her, and you turn to look at Jake, still feeling rather speechless. You said you wouldn’t be thinking about the whole Jane situation but now that you mentioned it, it’s starting to bother you again. Honestly, you don’t see what it is about Jake that could have all of your friends on edge at the mention of his name! He genuinely looks harmless. 

“Something the matter? I hope I didn’t vex you with that little stunt of mine. I only meant it as a funny gesture,” Jake says, a small frown tugging at his lips. You quickly shake your head to reassure him. Fuck, you were quiet for too long.

“No, it’s nothing. You’re fine, I was just thinking,” you reply, hoping it sounds sincere. It’s not like you’re lying. 

Jake tilts his head curiously at you, his frown softening. “Thinking? May I ask what about?”

Resting your hands on the table, you fold them before leaning your chin on them, looking up at Jake. For a moment, you’re tempted to spill your thoughts to him but you catch yourself. You don’t want to ruin this just yet so it’s best to let it go. You’ll get your chance to unearth this shit with him in a more appropriate setting. If it does end up being something serious, you would rather deal with that in a more private setting where no one else can lay witness. This isn’t a free fucking movie, alright?

“Nothing important of note,” you reply before offering a small smile, hoping it’s enough to derail his train of thought. “So how’d midterms go?”

The exhausted sigh that he lets out tells you all that you need to hear. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dont ask me anything abt movies the only one i remember in full detail is who framed roger rabbit to give u an idea as to where i sit when it comes to media .

**Author's Note:**

> annnnnnd ta-da!! here's my piece for the dirkjake bigbang !! a big thanks to mango for drawing the cover art im still very much in love w it (*w*) im so happy to have been able to team up w them !!! there's still more to come but pls forgive me if im slow i've got a lot of moving parts plus some personal stuff going on qwq) thank u sm for reading n let me know what u think !!! n don't forget to check out the [dirkjakeweek twitter](https://twitter.com/dirkjakeweek) to see the lovely work from the rest of the authors n artists. happy dirkjake week everybody <3<3


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